To live with your heart striving upward

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Novena Prayer for Consecrating the United States to the Sacred Heart of Jesus

O Most Scared Heart of Jesus, You know the longings of our hearts, and You desire that we enjoy friendship with You.

From Your pierced side You have poured out a wellspring of Life for which we thirst. Your Heart burns for a love of all people to return to a right relationship with You.

We celebrate the abundant gifts You have given this nation, founded on the self-evident truths that our Creator has endowed all people with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

We make reparation for the offenses against You and against human dignity  that have taken place in [and by] this nation.

May our hearts be united to Yours, that our families and communities enjoy peace and happiness; may broken relationships be reconciled, injustices repaired, and the wounds of our land be healed.

May Your holy Catholic Church serve as a sign pointing all people to Your infinite love.

O Desire of Nations and Center of History, we ask You to bless this United States of America; who live and reign with God the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God for ever and ever. Amen

Ray of Mercy, by Monica Skrzypczak

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[H]umanity's Author, Architect, and sole Savior is the Trinitarian God in whom we place our trust.

Anna Rowlands, in her speech for the press release concerning Magnifica humanitas

[apenitentialprayer]

is there an official church stance on organ donation? i feel guilty about not wanting to give my body away. i worry what it might mean if i am not buried all together.

Hey there!

The Catholic Church doesn’t have a problem with ethically sourced organ donation. Per Evanglium Vitae (§86b), the choice to become an organ donor is a “particularly praiseworthy” way of helping to build up a culture of life, a “sincere gift of self” that participates in Jesus’s redemptive giving over of His own Body for the life of the world. The Catechism (§2296) clarifies further: “organ donation after death is a noble and meritorious act, and is to be encouraged as an expression of generous solidarity,” so long as the person has given explicit consent.

If you are worried that not being buried whole and entire will have negative ramifications concerning the Resurrection, I can assure you that is not the case; we can see this in both the historical and contemporary practice of the Church. Relic veneration immediately comes to mind; the bodies of different saints have been separated and are housed in different churches, for example. Individual body parts are even known to go on tour; in just the past few years, I have personally encountered the heartstring of (then-Blessed) Carlo Acutis, as well as the skull of Saint Thomas Aquinas. And this practice was true of non-canonized Christians in the pre- and early modern periods, too; to name one example, parts of King Richard the Lionheart are buried in Anjou, Aquitaine, and Normandy.

That being said, becoming an organ donor is not compulsory, and I am not an organ donor myself. 

[star-wars-forever]

Commander Skywalker

by Grzegorz Domaradzki

[souf-vs-staff]

You should be able to listen to a full album without looking at your phone. You should be able to watch a 3 hour film from beginning to end without checking social media. If you can't do this, you need to start training your attention span as if it were a physical muscle. I don't experience boredom or restlessness because I've trained my brain to not be dependent on quick stimuli and dopamine hits. If you can't chill on a park bench while waiting for a friend with just your imagination to keep you company, you need to learn how to do it ASAP because one day we may not have access to the internet.

[apenitentialprayer]

The devil tempts other men; but an idle man tempts the devil. An idle man's brain is the devil's shop, where he is continually working mischief.

John Wesley (Letter to a Roman Catholic, §15b)

Engage in some occupation, that the devil may always find you busy.

Saint Jerome (Epistle 125, §11)

[apenitentialprayer]

You must give yourselves to work of some kind, so that the devil may always find you busy; no idleness on your part must give him a chance to pierce the defences of your souls.

Saint Albert of Jerusalem (The Rule of Saint Albert, §20)

[apenitentialprayer]

Fly [from] an idle life as the source of all mischief, and take it for a certain truth, that an idle life will never bring a Christian to heaven.

Bishop Richard Challoner, Fourth Rule for a Christian Life.

These brothers whom the Lord favors with the gift of working should do so faithfully and devotedly, so that idleness, the enemy of the soul, is excluded, yet the spirit of holy prayer and devotion, which all other temporal things should serve, is not extinguished.

Saint Francis of Assisi (First Rule, Article 5)

[vriskakinnieaynrand]

[onion-souls]

[apenitentialprayer]

Literally what the Académie Française sounds like

[apenitentialprayer]

Please pray for a special intention?

[apenitentialprayer]

Thanks for everyone who has prayed, things are looking good. Keep the prayers coming for another four weeks?

[apenitentialprayer]

Things continue to look good! Pray for the intention again for another four weeks?

[apenitentialprayer]

If you could keep praying until Ash Wednesday, I would appreciate it!

[apenitentialprayer]

Things are going well, keep praying until mid-March with me?

[apenitentialprayer]

If you can keep going until mid-April, I would appreciate it!

[apenitentialprayer]

We’re in the home stretch now; pray with me for another two weeks?

[apenitentialprayer]

These last few weeks are going to be unpredictable. If you could keep me and this intention in your thoughts and prayers, I would appreciate it!

[hotvampireadjacent]

[apenitentialprayer]

When we realize that we don’t have it all together, we can care for people because we no longer feel morally superior to them. Consequently, we are quicker to help than to give advice, quicker to listen than to lecture. […] Knowing we are inadequate before God and other people leads to compassion, but thinking we are good before God and others makes us self-centered and difficult to live with. The better we think we are, the less we can love. The more we see our need, the more we’ll turn for help . . . and the more we’ll help others because we are able to see their need.

Paul E. Miller (Love Walked Along Us: Learning to Love Like Jesus, page 55)

[apenitentialprayer]

After all, almost the main work of life is to come out of our selves, out of the little, dark prison we are all born in. 

C.S. Lewis

If I live for myself, it is in myself that I fester and die. If I live for others, the world is enlarged, and I grow along with it.

Fr. Albert Paretsky, O.P., homily for Wednesday of the Third Week of Lent, 2026

[ostdrossel]

Sass and pride at the jelly trough on yet another dreary, rainy and cool May day. These are Rosebreasted Grosbeaks and Baltimore Orioles. They have the ability to lift the mood of a human ☺️

[catholicapothecary]

When we speak of dignity, we do not always use the word in the same way. Sometimes we refer to moral dignity, namely the way in which a person directs his or her choices and actions. At other times, we think of social dignity, which refers to a person’s living conditions and the concrete respect received from society. In other cases, we refer to existential dignity, meaning the way in which a person perceives his or her own worth and the value of life. These aspects of dignity can be enhanced or diminished. In addition to these notions, there is also the more profound and important level of ontological dignity. This is the dignity that belongs to every human being simply by virtue of existing, of having been willed, created and loved by God. No sin, failure, humiliation or exclusion can diminish the profound value of a human life that God has willed and called into being.

Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas

[apenitentialprayer]

(cf. Dignitas infinita, §7-8)

[apenitentialprayer]

The Gospel VI: Resurrection, by Christopher Powers

[A]s the Spirit configures people to the template of Christ—specifically to his descent into death and ascent into glory—they too are thereby delivered from their present oppressed and corrupted condition by means of its termination in Christ’s execution and their recreation in a new liberated and transformed condition that is grafted onto his resurrected existence and is now no longer inhabited by the powers of Sin and Death.

Douglas Campbell (The Quest for Paul's Gospel: A Suggested Strategy, page 59)

Salvátor mundi, salva nos, qui per crucem et resurrectiónem tuam liberásti nos. Save us, Savior of the world; for by Your Cross and Resurrection, You have set us free.

Memorial Acclamation for the Roman Rite, Option 3

[warismenstrualenvy]

Archangel Gabriel and The Virgin Mary by Mikhail Nesterov (early 1900s, lead and colour pencil on paper)

[orthodoxadventure]

Those born in baptism receive the image of Christ and are given the possibility of developing the personal character of their lives through their responsiveness to Christ, and through their contemplation and imitation of Him.

The Experience of God - Orthodox Dogmatic Theology: The Sanctifying Mysteries by Saint Dumitru Stăniloae

[apenitentialprayer]

This sacrament [of baptism], in fact, configures him to the passion, death and resurrection of the Lord, and places the whole future of the life of the baptized under the seal of this mystery.

Pope Paul VI, Paenitemini

[apenitentialprayer]

I forgot just how hard the liturgy goes on Trinity Sunday