Showing posts with label Spiritual Warfare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spiritual Warfare. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

ISLAMIC SUPREMACY: Raping White Women for ‘Allah’

Islamic supremacy is the convoluted mindset that all non-Muslims are refuse deserving of torture, rape and various other forms of violent subjugation. It is the core tenet of a barbaric ideology that propounds the dangerous and feckless notion that if your not Muslim–you’re not human.  
That’s right: Not human.

Read the rest of the story.  (Please excuse the slight crudity at the end)


Will you join me as a Crusader of the Immaculate?

Monday, November 10, 2014

Why we fight

My friends,
Forgive the absence.  Life has gotten in the way recently.

I came across this today, and realized that it had been too long since calling the troops to battle.

Will you make the commitment with me to be a Crusader of the Immaculate?

Friday, September 19, 2014

21 Things We Do When We Make the Sign of the Cross


The Sign of the Cross is a simple gesture yet a profound expression of faith for both Catholic and other Christians. As Catholics, it’s something we do when we enter a church, after we receive Communion, before meals, and every time we pray. But what exactly are we doing when we make the Sign of the Cross? Here are 21 things:



  1. Pray: We begin and end our prayers with the Sign of the Cross, perhaps not realizing that the sign is itself a prayer. If prayer, at its core, is “an uprising of the mind to God,” as St. John Damascene put it, then the Sign of the Cross assuredly qualifies. “No empty gesture, the sign of the cross is a potent prayer that engages the Holy Spirit as the divine advocate and agent of our successful Christian living.”
  2. Open ourselves to grace: As a sacramental, the Sign of the Cross prepares us for receiving God’s blessing and disposes us to cooperate with His grace.  
  3. Sanctify the day: As an act repeated throughout the key moments of each day, the Sign of the Cross sanctifies our day. “At every forward step and movement, at every going in and out, when we put on our clothes and shoes, when we bathe, when we sit at table, when we light the lamps, on couch, on seat, in all the ordinary actions of daily life, we trace upon the forehead the sign,” wrote Tertullian.
  4. Commit the whole self to Christ: In moving our hands from our foreheads to our hearts and then both shoulders, we are asking God’s blessing for our mind, our passions and desires, our very bodies. In other words, the Sign of the Cross commits us, body and soul, mind and heart, to Christ. “Let it take in your whole being—body, soul, mind, will, thoughts, feelings, your doing and not-doing—and by signing it with the cross strengthen and consecrate the whole in the strength of Christ, in the name of the triune God.”
  5. Recall the Incarnation: Our movement is downward, from our foreheads to our chest “because Christ descended from the heavens to the earth,” Pope Innocent III wrote in his instructions on making the Sign of the Cross. Holding two fingers together—either the thumb with the ring finger or with index finger—also represents the two natures of Christ.
  6. Remember the Passion of Our Lord: Fundamentally, in tracing out the outlines of a cross on ourselves, we are remembering Christ’s crucifixion. This remembrance is deepened if we keep our right hand open, using all five fingers to make the sign—corresponding to the Five Wounds of Christ.
  7. Affirm the Trinity: In invoking the name of God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, we are affirming our belief in a triune God. This is also reinforced by using three fingers to make the sign, according to Pope Innocent III.
  8. Focus our prayer on God: One of the temptations in prayer is to address it to God as we conceive of Him—the man upstairs, our buddy, a sort of cosmic genie, etc. When this happens, our prayer becomes more about us than an encounter with the living God. The Sign of the Cross immediately focuses us on the true God, “When we invoke the Trinity, we fix our attention on the God who made us, not on the God we have made. We fling our images aside and address our prayers to God as he has revealed himself to be: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”
  9. Affirm the procession of Son and Spirit: In first lifting our hand to our forehead, we recall that the Father is the first person the Trinity. In lowering our hand we “express that the Son proceeds from the Father.” And, in ending with the Holy Spirit, we signify that the Spirit proceeds from both the Father and the Son, according to Francis de Sales.
  10. Confess our faith: In affirming our belief in the Incarnation, the crucifixion, and the Trinity, we are making a sort of mini-confession of faith in words and gestures, proclaiming the core truths of the creed.
  11. Invoke the power of God’s name: In Scripture, God’s name carries power. In Philippians 2:10, St. Paul tells us that “at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth.” And, in John 14:13-14, Jesus Himself said, “And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.”
  12. Crucify ourselves with Christ: Whoever wishes to follow Christ “must deny himself” and “take up his cross” as Jesus told the disciples in Matthew 16:24. “I have been crucified with Christ,” St. Paul writes in Galatians 2:19. “Proclaiming the sign of the cross proclaims our yes to this condition of discipleship.”
  13. Ask for support in our suffering: In crossing our shoulders we ask God “to support us—to shoulder us—in our suffering.”
  14. Reaffirm our baptism: In using the same words with which we were baptized, the Sign of the Cross is a “summing up and re-acceptance of our baptism,” according to then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
  15. Reverse the curse: The Sign of the Cross recalls the forgiveness of sins and the reversal of the Fall by passing “from the left side of the curse to the right of blessing,” according to de Sales. The movement from left to right also signifies our future passage from present misery to future glory just as Christ “crossed over from death to life and from Hades to Paradise,” Pope Innocent II wrote.
  16. Remake ourselves in Christ’s image: In Colossians 3, St. Paul uses the image of clothing to describe how our sinful natures are transformed in Christ. We are to take off the old self and put on the self “which is being renewed … in the image of its creator,” Paul tells us. The Church Fathers saw a connection between this verse and the stripping of Christ on the cross, “teaching that stripping off our old nature in baptism and putting on a new one was a participation in Christ’s stripping at his crucifixion.”He concludes that we can view the Sign of the Cross as “our way of participating in Christ’s stripping at the Crucifixion and his being clothed in glory at his resurrection.” Thus, in making the Sign of the Cross, we are radically identifying ourselves with the entirety of the crucifixion event—not just those parts of it we can accept or that are palatable to our sensibilities.
  17. Mark ourselves for Christ: In ancient Greek, the word for sign was sphragis (σφραγίς), which was also a mark of ownership.  “For example, a shepherd marked his sheep as his property with a brand that he called a sphragis.” In making the Sign of the Cross, we mark ourselves as belong to Christ, our true shepherd.
  18. Soldier on for Christ: The sphragis was also the term for a general’s name that would be tattooed on his soldiers. This too is an apt metaphor for the Christian life: while we can be compared to sheep in the sense of following Christ as our shepherd, we are not called to be sheepish. We instead are called to be soldiers of Christ. As St. Paul wrote in Ephesians 6, “Put on the armor of God so that you may be able to stand firm against the tactics of the devil. … take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”
  19. Ward off the devil: The Sign of the Cross is one of the very weapons we use in that battle with the devil. As one medieval preacher named Aelfric declared, “A man may wave about wonderfully with his hands without creating any blessing unless he make the sign of the cross. But, if he do, the fiend will soon be frightened on account of the victorious token.” In another statement, attributed to St. John Chrysostom, demons are said to “fly away” at the Sign of the Cross “dreading it as a staff that they are beaten with.” 
  20. Seal ourselves in the Spirit: In the New Testament, the word sphragis, mentioned above, is also sometimes translated as seal, as in 2 Corinthians 1:22, where St. Paul writes that, “the one who gives us security with you in Christ and who anointed us is God; he has also put his seal upon us and given the Spirit in our hearts as a first installment.” In making the Sign of the Cross, we are once again sealing ourselves in the Spirit, invoking His powerful intervention in our lives.
  21. Witness to others: As a gesture often made in public, the Sign of the Cross is a simple way to witness our faith to others. “Let us not then be ashamed to confess the Crucified. Be the Cross our seal made with boldness by our fingers on our brow, and on everything; over the bread we eat, and the cups we drink; in our comings in, and goings out; before our sleep, when we lie down and when we rise up; when we are in the way, and when we are still,” wrote St. Cyril of Jerusalem.

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

5 Prayers Recommended by an Exorcist to Combat Evil

Editor's Note. Normally, when reposting from another blog, I only post a portion and then give the link.  However, this is much too important, and I will post the entire entry, the original of which is found at http://www.stpeterslist.com/


Listers, Father Gabriele Amorth claims to have performed over 70,000 exorcisms from 1986 to 2010. The good priest serves as an exorcist for the Diocese of Rome and is the founder and honorary president of the International Association of Exorcists. He has written two books: An Exorcist Tells His Story & An Exorcist: More Stories. And yes, his favorite movie is The Exorcist.

In his book An Exorcist Tells His Story, Fr. Amorth lists the following prayers to help combat evil; however, Fr. Amorth and many other priests have stressed that the number one protection from evil is the Sacrament of Confession and the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist. Often times people want esoteric rituals to deliver them from evil, when in reality what they need is to become right with God. Along with regular Confession and reception of the Holy Eucharist, these prayers should be coupled with Our Lord’s Prayer and the Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel.



Prayers of Deliverance




1. Prayer Against Malefice from the Greek Ritual

Kyrie eleison. God, our Lord, King of ages, All-powerful and All-mighty, You Who made everything and Who transform everything simply by Your will. You Who in Babylon changed into dew the flames of the ‘seven-times hotter’ furnace and protected and saved the three holy children. You are the doctor and the physician of our soul. You are the salvation of those who turn to You. We beseech You to make powerless, banish, and drive out every diabolic power, presence, and machination; every evil influence, malefice, or evil eye and all evil actions aimed against Your servant [name of person/s]. Where there is envy and malice, give us an abundance of goodness, endurance, victory, and charity. O Lord, You Who love man, we beg You to reach out Your powerful hands and Your most high and mighty arms and send the angel of peace over us, to protect us, body and soul. May he keep at bay and vanquish every evil power, every poison or malice invoked against us by corrupt and envious people. Then, under the protection of Your authority may we sing, in gratitude, ‘The Lord is my salvation; whom should I fear? I will not fear evil because You are with me, my God, my strength, my powerful Lord, Lord of peace, Father of all ages.”

Yes, Lord our God, be merciful to us, Your image, and save your servant [name of person/s] from every threat or harm from the evil one, and protect him/her by raising him/her above all evil. We ask You this through the intercession of our Most Blessed, glorious Lady, Mary ever Virgin, Mother of God, of the most splendid archangels and all Your saints. Amen!



2. Anima Christi

Soul of Christ, sanctify me; Body of Christ, save me; Blood of Christ, inebriate me; Water from the side of Christ, wash me; Passion of Christ, strengthen me; O good Jesus, hear me; within Thy wounds, hide me; let me never be separated from Thee; from the evil one, deliver me; at the hour of my death, call me and bid me come to Thee, that with Thy saints, I may praise Thee forever and ever. Amen.



3. Prayer Against Every Evil

Spirit of our God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Most Holy Trinity, Immaculate Virgin Mary, angels, archangels, and saints of heaven, descend upon me. Please purify me, Lord, mold me, fill me with yourself, use me.

Banish all the forces of evil from me, destroy them, vanish them, so that I can be healthy and do good deeds.

Banish from me all spells, witchcraft, black magic, malefice, ties, maledictions, and the evil eye; diabolic infestations, oppressions, possessions; all that is evil and sinful, jealously, perfidy, envy; physical, psychological, moral, spiritual, diabolical aliments.

Burn all these evils in hell, that they may never again touch me or any other creature in the entire world.

I command and bid all the power who molest me – by the power of God all powerful, in the name of Jesus Christ our Savior, through the intercession of the Immaculate Virgin Mary – to leave me forever, and to be consigned into the everlasting hell, where they will be bound by Saint Michael the archangel, Saint Gabriel, Saint Raphael, our guardian angels, and where they will be crushed under the heel of the Immaculate Virgin Mary. Amen.



4. Prayer for Inner Healing

Lord Jesus, You came to heal our wounded and troubled hearts. I beg You to heal the torments that cause anxiety in my heart; I beg You, in a particular way, to heal all who are the cause of sin. I beg You to come into my life and heal me of the psychological harms that struck me in my early years and from the injuries that they caused through my life.

Lord Jesus, You know my burdens. I lay them all on Your Good Shepherd’s Heart. I beseech You – by the merits of the great, open wound in Your heart-to heal the small wounds that are in mine. Heal the pain of my memories, so that nothing that has happened to me will cause me to remain in pain and anguish, filled with anxiety.

Heal, O Lord, all those wounds that have been the cause of all the evil that is rooted in my life. I want to forgive all those who have offended me. Look to those inner sores that make me unable to forgive. You Who came to forgive the afflicted of heart, please, heal my own heart.

Heal, my Lord Jesus, those intimate wounds that cause me physical illness. I offer You my heart. Accept it, Lord, purify it and give me the sentiments of Your Divine Heart. Help me to be meek and humble.

Heal me, O Lord, from the pain caused by the death of my loved ones, which is oppressing me. Grant me to regain peace and joy in the knowledge that You are the Resurrection and the Life. Make me an authentic witness to Your Resurrection, Your victory over sin and death, Your living presence among us. Amen.



5. Prayer for Deliverance

My Lord, you are all powerful, you are God, you are Father. We beg you through the intercession and help of the archangels Michael, Raphael and Gabriel, for the deliverance of our brothers and sisters who are enslaved by the evil one. All saints of Heaven, come to our aid.

From anxiety, sadness and obsessions, we beg You. Free us, O Lord.
From hatred, fornication, envy, we beg You, Free us, O Lord.
From thoughts of jealousy, rage, and death, we beg You, Free us, O Lord.
From every thought of suicide and abortion, we beg You, Free us, O Lord.
From every form of sinful sexuality, we beg You, Free us, O Lord.
From every division in our family, and every harmful friendship, we beg You, Free us, O Lord.
From every sort of spell, malefic, witchcraft, and every form of the occult, we beg You,
Free us, O Lord.

Lord, You Who said, “I leave you peace, My peace I give you,” grant that, through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, we may be liberated from every evil spell and enjoy your peace always. In the name of Christ, our Lord. Amen.

***

Please remember the best defense against evil is a well-ordered and holy soul. Regular confession and reception of the Holy Eucharist is a person’s greatest refuge. Also remember these prayers for deliverance should be coupled with Our Lord’s Prayer and the Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel.

Friday, September 5, 2014

Fasting on Fridays and Spiritual Warfare

by Fr. Dwight Longenecker

Live the Fast Bread Rolls
As a young priest I used to fast on Fridays.
This was  a complete fast. Nothing but water from after supper on Thursday until breakfast on Saturday.
It took a couple of weeks to get used to it, but once my system was engaged in the new routine it wasn’t so difficult.
I took on this form of asceticism because it felt like the right thing to do. Over the years I eased off and now I fast on Fridays by maybe skipping lunch or only eating fruit.
I was struggling with periods of depression at the time and I found that, by fasting on Fridays I had given myself one day in the week which was a “down” day. It was like I was allowing my body, mind and spirit to go into the dark places and deal with what was there. I was going into the cave to fight the dragons.
By giving my system one day a week to deal with the dark I discovered that the bouts of depression lessened at other times. It was as if  there was some darkness that had to be faced and by giving my spirit and mind permission to “go into the dark” there was what turned out to be a healthy outlet. Eventually the depression disappeared.


Read the rest at patheos.com



Editor's note:  Warriors, we are engaged in spiritual warfare.  Perhaps fasting could be a part of our arsenal?