How to avoid distractions during the Rosary

You cannot say your Rosary without having a few involuntary distractions; it is even difficult to say a Hail Mary without your imagination troubling you a little, for it is never still; but you can say it without voluntary distractions, and you must take all sorts of precautions to lessen involuntary distractions and to control your imagination.

To do this:

1) Put yourself in the presence of God and imagine that God and his Blessed Mother are watching you.

2) Imagine that your guardian angel is at your right hand, taking your Hail Marys, if they are well said, and using them like roses to make crowns for Jesus and Mary.

3) Remember that at your left hand is the devil, ready to pounce on every Hail Mary that comes his way and to write it down in his book of death, if they are not said with attention, devotion, and reverence.

4) Do not fail to offer up each decade in honor of one of the mysteries, and try to form a picture in your mind of Jesus and Mary in connection with that mystery.

Source = HERE.

40 Days for Life

40 Days for Life starts on Ash Wednesday, it was a great idea by Americans, and it means vigils outside abortion mills 24/7 and prayer and fasting until March 28- BUT!!

That's all kinda boring because my REAL news is that 40 Days for Life is now in Australia (America, and North Ireland if you're dropping by) again and in:

Melbourne - http://www.40daysforlife.com/melbourne/
Sydney - http://www.40daysforlife.com/sydney/
Brisbane - http://www.40daysforlife.com/brisbane

The home page for 40 Days for life is here- http://www.40daysforlife.com/about.cfm

You don't have to live in those cities to participate.
There are heaps of things you can do - go to the Home page and click on "Get Involved".

So basically, this means you have NO excuse not to do something for the 100,000 children killed by abortion every year in Australia alone and making this a wonderful Lent- saving lives!!



The following is a trailer (for America) for the 40 Days for Life...it may inspire you to participate.

Changing old habits

Are you a Good Old Boy?

- Do you go to church on Sunday morning, and then get drunk Sunday afternoon while watching the NFL?

- Or worse, do you not even go to Church on Sunday because your golf game and your Sunday Newspaper take priority?

- Do you follow all of the latest news on TV, but don't have a clue what the Bible says, or what your Church teaches?

- Do you tell dirty jokes to the guys?

- Do you sneak a peek at porn whenever no one else is around?

- Do you flirt with the women at work but don't like talking to your very own wife?

- Do you like to go to Hooters and stare at the cleavage?

- Are you obsessed with spending quality time with your computer, your car, your sports, your buddies, etc., but hate to spend time with your very own family?

If you answered YES to any of these, then you may be suffering from "Good ol' Boy" (GOB) Syndrome.

















Unfortunately for you, you can't have it both ways - you have to choose, because most GOBs won't make it to Heaven unless they repent and embrace Jesus Christ.
That is decidedly uncool for most GOBs.
The peer pressure of your drinking/joking/smoking/sports buddies would probably be too great for you to quit that lifestyle, and besides, they would laugh at you if you did that.


However, it is also VERY true that none of us will come to a natural end, but rather a supernatural one, when we die.
What that means is that we will all wind up in one of 3 places upon our death - Heaven, Purgatory, or Hell.












That means that if you are not paying attention to God now, and are putting football, porn, drinking, etc., before Him, then you will have a very tough time getting into Heaven.
Remember that you could die tomorrow on the way to work.
No one is guaranteed a tomorrow in this life.
Probably none of the 3000 or so who died on 9/11/2001 thought that they were going to die that day and meet their Maker while they were getting dressed that morning.









Besides all of that, participating in GOB activities usually means that your family life suffers greatly.
The wife that you promised to love, honor, and obey in front of God, your priest, and your family and relatives during your wedding, probably would love to have you come back into her life as a loving husband and father to your kids.











Unfortunately, the tug and pull of your GOB lifestyle wins out more often than not.
Hopefully, you will heed this message to come back to Christ before a disaster happens in your family.
Sooner or later, there will be a car wreck, an injury, a death, cancer, etc., that God will use to call you back to his flock.
At that time, you will probably plead with God for help in eliminating this event from your life, or the life of a loved one.
Just like an NFL quarterback doesn't wait for Sunday to start getting in shape for the game, neither should you wait for a tragedy to happen to you or your family to begin to learn to pray.
It takes a lot less faith to pray to prevent a tragedy, rather than to undo one.











A word here about how the devil operates.
No one signs a contract with the devil to be subject to him.
The real way that he gets you is through sin.
Every time you sin, and the more grievous the sin, the devil and his minions get a piece of you.
The bigger the sin, and the more frequent the sin, the more you will find that life is mysteriously not going well for you.
While this is not demonic possession as seen in "The Exorcist", there are lesser degrees of control that the devil can exert in your life.
Your marriage, your health, your outlook on life, your family, your job, etc., will all start to fall apart, and you won't have a clue why.
You will start hollering and screaming at your family for the silliest things as a result.
You will start blaming everyone else for your very own self-created problems.

So - By not sinning (porn, drinking, anger, treating your family horribly), you reduce this possibility from occurring in your life, and the life of your family.


So now what?
First, you have to eliminate your GOB lifestyle and then go to confession and have God bless you through that sacrament.
Through this sacrament, God forgives you of your past sins that you confess to His priest, as long as you truly repent and promise to try not to do sin again.
This part of the cure can be thought of as "eliminating the negative" in your life.

After that, start reading a good Catholic Bible.








The last thing is to learn how to pray.
Prayer is not "give me, give me, give me".
The 4 ways of prayer are:
1. Adoration
2. Contrition
3. Thanksgiving
4. Supplication (requests) - which is abbreviated ACTS.

The person who learns to use the first 3 items (ACT) as the majority of his prayers usually gets the supplications (requests) answered.
The person who only uses requests while ignoring the first three rarely gets his prayers answered.
A useful approach to prayers is to be as humble as you can, as often as you can. The devil's sin was pride, because he wanted to be God.
The opposite of pride is humility, so the person who really is humble usually is the most successful prayer warrior.
The more you humbly pray in adoration and contrition and thanksgiving, the easier it becomes.
Most people pray today like they have to make a long distance telephone call to God when they want something.
After you begin your new prayer life, you will realize that no long distance phone call is needed, because God is right beside you and can hear you just fine 24/7/365.











In summary, being a "good ol' boy" is a very natural human state of existence for most "guys".
Sadly, it will not get you into heaven, but usually blocks that from happening.
That is the long-term problem.
The short-term problem is that it will start to affect your earthly life here as well, in a decidedly negative fashion.

Accepting Jesus in your life, receiving the sacraments, going to Church every Sunday, reading the Bible and humble prayer with Adoration, Contrition, Thanksgiving and Supplication is the cure.

To read this whole article, go HERE.

Time

I have realised that I need to put more time into reading the Bible and TALKING and LISTENING to God (praying).

I knew a long time ago, that I should be doing this (and have started), but never continued with it, as I have let distractions and excuses get in the way.

For this to be a reality in my life, I have come to the conclusion that I have to forfit doing other things (such as reading blogs), and prioritize my time better.

I find it easier to 'do' things by minusing other things in my life all together, so that I don't get distracted and so that I am not as easily tempted.

The devil trys his best to keep us busy.
The last thing he wants is for us to pray and form a 'personal' relationship with Jesus.
He couldn't stand it if we set aside time, to not only read the Bible, but find time to TALK to Jesus each day and then be quiet and still (say nothing), and actually LISTEN to what He is telling us.

I recently recieved a good reminder from someone who wrote:
"Be faithful to your time for daily prayer above everything else like Jesus was....this is THE KEY, because it is only then that you can listen more deeply to God's will for your life and then put it into practice.
Everything stems from your prayer life!
And the devil is so happy when he stops you from making time to pray because he has stopped you from listening to God speak to you directly through his Word!!!
Always be radical in this one thing and everything else will flow from it."

God gave us the Scriptures to read and to see how He lived His life and to learn how to love like Jesus does.
If we don't know Jesus, then how can we be like Him?
And to know Him, we have to form a close relationship with Him.

So don't be offended if I don't read your blog anymore, or have stopped following or don't comment.
Right now in my life, I am shutting off my temptations and concentrating on starting to form a real relationship with my true Father who loves me more than I know and is waiting and longing for me to dialogue with Him.

Making time for God

Almost all of us have busy lives so here are a couple of ideas to make time for God. One idea is to wake up a little early and spend some time in prayer before getting up and/or go to bed a little early and spend some time in prayer and spiritual types of reading before going to sleep.
St. Teresa of Avila said she often began prayer with a good spiritual book to help put her mind on God as to pray correctly one needs to first set aside other concerns and put our minds on God alone and then she also advises to speak to Jesus as one would a friend.

Loving the people in our life also requires setting aside some time for them.
Love desires to be with those we love and just as we set aside time to be with God alone, so we need to make time for our loved ones on earth by spending time with the people who count to us.
If we want a relationship with God and others we need to spend some time relating or else no relationship!
No time?
How much time do you spend on the internet or watching TV or doing other recreational types of things or maybe even working for things you don't really need while neglecting those things you do, like God and some special people in your life? The greatest two commandments are:
Love God with your whole heart, whole mind and whole strength and your neighbor as yourself.
If we do these things we will have inner peace now and forever and if we don't, we won't.
St. Therese of Lisieux had some words worth pondering as she neared her own death... she said, "It is love alone that counts".

No need to worry about things anyway as God will take care of all our needs when we put Him first including our need for a spouse and people to love us and to love in return.
If we are doing that and it hasn't happened yet, what is needed is trust... do what is right and good and true and trusting God has a great plan for our life and it will unfold as time goes on and in the right time.
We don't need to do things out of fear or impulsiveness or drives, in fact those feelings should not be acted on but just trust God and do what is right and what often is accompanied by a sense of deep peace inside where God dwells inside us and things will be as they should and even better than we imagined they could be.
The Bible says, " Fear is useless, what is needed is trust" and if we don't have it or anything else we need the Bible says, "Ask you and will receive, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be open."
As far as earthly things go, Our Lady of Fatima said that what is required of us all is doing our "daily duty".
Our daily duty is to what is required for us at this time and place in our life and relationships.

Doing what is right can be a gigantic struggle because we are all sinners and we need God's grace to overcome but we have God's promise of his help and grace for the asking seeking to do what is right and letting the chips fall where they may.
We need to pray for the strength to do what is right and God will give us the grace and make up for the lack in our actions and make all things work together for good in our life.

With us some things are impossible, but with God all things are possible.

We need to become God pleasers and not a people pleasers.

Pain isn't pleasant but sometimes it is necessary to achieve real change and growth for ourselves and others so we need to accept any necessary pain and work through it to achieve the goal.

Additional thoughts:
If we want to be holy, we seek God's will alone and really that is the only thing that makes sense as God loves us more than we love ourselves.
He wants only what is best for us in the long run and He knows everything and we don't and he knows what is best and we don't, so seeking his will is really and truly seeking our best good.
Some of us who have made messes of our lives in various ways realize this through experience, but it is possible to learn this just by trying it... if we try it (learn God's will and put it into practice) we will see it is true and works without having to understand it or learn things the hard way or hit bottom or whatever. Jesus says if we want to know what is true, to do to what He says and we will know it is true.
That is how we know it is true in the doing it, not in the understanding it, as we will understand it when we do it... so the thing here is not intellectualizing but putting it into practice.
In effect Jesus says: Do what I tell you and you will know it is true.
With God's help we can do it, and with someone like that on our team all will be fine.

Summary:
Seek God first and all things will be given us besides and all things will work together for good (as God describes good not as we do as sometimes what seems good to us really isn't best in the long run and only God really knows what is best and sometimes we don't know what is best in any given circumstances) if we love God and put him first in our lives.

Jesus' prayer:Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed by thy name. Thy kingdom come, THY WILL BE DONE on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. Amen. (For yours is the kingdom, the power and the glory, forever).

From Catholic Spiritual Direction.

What is the purpose of Prayer?

REASONS TO PRAY (from Prayer for Beginners by Peter Kreeft):




1. Praying keeps your soul alive: Prayer is real contact with God, and God is the life of the soul as the soul is the life of the body. If you do not pray, your soul will wither and die, just as, if you do not eat, your body will wither and die.

2. Because God commands it: Three reasons he commands us to pray correspond to our three deepest needs, the fundamental needs of the three powers of our soul: prayer gives truth to our mind, goodness to our will, and beauty to our heart. "The true, the good, and the beautiful" are the three things we need and love the most, because they are three attributes of God.

3. Prayer changes us: We pray, not to change God's mind, but to change our own; not to command God, but to let God command us. Prayer is our obedience to God even when it asks God for things, for God commanded us to ask.

4. We do not have an infinite amount of time: We are one day nearer Home today than we ever were before. I guarantee you that after you die, you will not say, "I spent too much time praying; I wish I had watched more TV instead." We must learn to pray because infinite and uncompromising Love will not leave us alone until we do. If we do not learn to practice his presence with our whole mind and will in this life, we will have to learn it in Purgatory, where it will be much more painful - or else we will never learn it, and that is Hell.

5. Learning to pray is dress rehearsal for eternal life: What you do when you rehearse a play is actually to practice it, to do it; and what we do when we pray is actually to practice what we will be doing in Heaven.

6. Prayer is delightful: Brother Lawrence says, in The Practice of the Presence of God, "There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful than that of a continual conversation with God. Those only can comprehend it who practice and experience it."

7. Prayer is the way to know God: One moment of prayer, of weak worship, confused contrition, tepid thanksgiving, or pitiful petition will bring us closer to God than all the books of theology in the world.

8. Prayer is the only way to spiritual progress: We must pray in order to grow, and we must grow because Infinite Love will not, cannot, settle for less than the greatest joy of which his beloved creature is capable.

9. Prayer is necessary because without it we cannot attain the meaning of life, the end and purpose of our existence: Becoming saints is the meaning of life. It is why we exist. It is why God created us. Prayer is our first step in becoming saints. The second step is charity, a life of love, the ecstasy of giving ourselves away over and over again forever, as each Persons of the Trinity do. But this is prayer, too, or an extension of prayer. This is practicing the presence of God in action.

From: Catholic Answers.

Perseverance in Prayer

Seven simple Rules:

1) Be constant - a daily routine is essential.











2) Try to improve the quality of your prayers.








3) Never doubt that God hears your prayers.











4) Avoid distractions but don't become depressed.











5) Listen as much as you speak.









6) Learn from others about prayer.








7) Don't forget - NEVER give up!

Surrender to Him

If you want to know about God, there is only one way to do it:
Get down on your knees.

You can make His acquaintance by investigation, but you can win His love only by loving.

Arguments will tell you God exists, for God’s existence can be confirmed by reason; but only by surrender will you come to know Him intimately.

That is one of the reasons why so many professors in secular institutions have no religion.

They know about God, but they do not know God.

And because they do not love what they already know, because they do not act on their belief, even the little they have is taken away.
They rattle the milk cans of theology but they never drink the milk.

Atheism is born from the womb of a bad conscience.
Disbelief comes from sin, not from reason.

This is not a broadcast about God, it is a plea to love God.
Worship Him because He is your perfection, more than knowledge is the perfection of the mind.

Love Him because you cannot be happy without love.

Love Him quite apart from all you are, for you have the right to love Him in your heart, even though you do not always succeed in loving Him in your acts.

Think a little less about whether you deserve to be loved by Him;
He loves you even though you are not deserving – it is His love alone that will make you deserving.



From Into the Deep.
Fr Fulton J. Sheen, 1944

Please pray

My Dad's cousin passed away this morning.
Please say a quick prayer upon reading this for his soul.

Eternal rest give unto him, O Lord;
And let perpetual light shine upon him

I am too blessed to be stressed

The shortest distance between a problem and a solution is the distance between your knees and the floor.

Garabandal and the Passion of Jesus

John Tauler, a great mystic of the Middle Ages, once wrote that when a venerable servant of God asked our Lord, "What would a man gain if he devoutly strove to meditate on the Passion?"
Our Lord answered;

* His sins would be washed away

* His negligences would be made up for by the merits of My sufferings.

* He would be given great strength so that he would not be easily overcome by his enemies.

* My grace will be renewed in him as frequently as he meditates and reflects on My sufferings.

* I will not deny him anything that will serve for his own good if he prays sincerely to Me for it. I will lead him to the state of perfection before his death.

* I will assist him in his last hour, protect him from his enemies and I will give him assurance of salvation.


To read more, go Here.

Struggling with the rosary

By Brian Pessaro, from Godspy.

The Rosary is excruciating. There I said it.
Archbishop Fulton Sheen said it was the most perfect prayer because it takes 19 minutes, which is the maximum time the average person can maintain a state of concentration. The truth is the Rosary can be a real chore.

St. Thérèse, the Little Flower, was being more honest when she said, “I am ashamed to confess it, but the recitation of the Rosary costs me more than to use an instrument of penance. I feel I am saying it so badly. Try as I may to make myself meditate on the mysteries, I never manage to fix my thoughts on them." Amen sister. I’m with you. And yet, like St. Thérèse, I wouldn’t give up the Rosary for anything.

I’ll admit I’m not always perfect about making it my top priority. I’ve often flopped into bed late at night only to realize I hadn’t done it yet.
I groan as I slide out from the sheets and reach for my beads on the nightstand. Those next 19 minutes are a far cry from the “perfect prayer” Archbishop Sheen described.
I can barely keep my eyes opened much less my mind focused. To be honest, it’s not much easier when I’m wide awake. I stink at contemplating the mysteries. The best I can manage is to visualize a picture from one of my Rosary booklets or a scene from The Passion of the Christ.

Distractions? Don’t get me started. On my way home from work, I’m bombarded with thoughts of everything but the mysteries. “The third joyful mystery is the… now what was it I was supposed to pick up from the grocery store… Was that my 9th Hail Mary or my 10th? Oh man, I just ran a red light! Sorry Mary.”
So why do I persist if it’s such drudgery? Simple. I wouldn’t be where I am today had it not been for Mary’s intercession.

This is my story.

Since the age of 11, I was addicted to pornography.
It began simple enough with sneaking peaks at my best friend’s father’s Playboys in the basement of his house.
But by the time I was 25, I was so hooked on Internet porn that I would itch for my wife to leave the apartment so I could secretly jump online. Several times over the years I tried to quit.
Each time, not only did I fail, but the addiction got worse to the point where I gave up resisting.
Then a friend of mine, who knew nothing of my addiction, loaned me a book on Mary and her supposed apparitions in Međugorje. I’m undecided about whether those apparitions are real. I’ll leave that to the Church to decide. However, I can tell you what is real. That book was what finally led me out of my addiction.
It was as if Mary reached up from the pages and grabbed me by the collar. I felt her say to me sternly, “Brian you’ve got to stop looking at that garbage. Starting now!”

My earthly mother hardly ever scolded me when I was younger. I was always the “good son.” But here I was at age 30 getting chastised by my Blessed Mother in a way I had never experienced.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked helplessly. I turned the page.
Pray the Rosary and wear the Scapular.
I groaned. “Rosary? I’ve tried that before. It’s boring. It doesn’t work for me.”
But Mary wouldn’t take no. “Try it again,” she insisted.
What about this scapular thing? I had no idea what a scapular was.
I thought it had something to do with shaving your head like the monks of the Middle Ages. (I had confused the “scap” in scapular for “scalp”, as in head.) “I’m not shaving my head Mary.” I read on and embarrassingly realized my mistake. “Oh. OK. I can wear that.”

That night I went online and ordered a Brown Scapular, and then I went to my bedroom dresser and pulled out my grandmom’s old rosary. It had been in there for years, nothing more than an heirloom.
I got on my knees, and I began to pray.
The next night, I did it again. Two nights in a row became three, then four, until before I knew it I had prayed the Rosary every night for a week.
Well it’s been 7 years, and I’m still going strong. I can count on two hands the total number of times I’ve missed.

OK so I pray the Rosary and I kicked a nasty porn habit.
Ho hum. Big deal you think.
Yes it is, because I should explain that when I say the addiction went away, I don’t mean gradually. I mean it vanished that first night.
It was like someone reached inside my brain, found the switch for porn addiction, and turned it off. I can’t explain it. I’m not a sex therapist, but I know that’s not supposed to happen. You don’t just put down a 19-year porn addiction like yesterday’s newspaper and walk away from it.

A lot of it has to do with a hormone called epinephrine that’s released in the brain each time you view pornography. It produces a high similar to cocaine.
Epinephrine is the gift that keeps on giving because it has a nasty side effect of burning the images into your brain. That’s why even when I was in my late twenties I could still see those images from when I was eleven as if it were yesterday. And now they’re gone.

That brings me back to why I pray the Rosary daily, and why I think everyone should too. It’s because of who made the request.
Mary is our Blessed Mother, and she’s asked us to do this. If she wants us to pray the Rosary, it doesn’t matter if we don’t “get” anything out of it, and it doesn’t matter if we don’t understand how it “works”.
The only thing that matters is that Mary is the one who asked.
She says she needs our help, and the way we can help her is to pray Rosaries.
Let her worry about the mechanics.
Did the servants at the wedding at Cana need to understand how Jesus was going to solve the wine shortage? No, they just needed to follow Mary’s advice.
I hope Mary doesn’t mind if I borrow her line and say when it comes to praying the Rosary, “Do whatever she tells you.”

Thank you for your Prayers

I would like to thank those who prayed for my friend undergoing brain surgery and his recovery.
He is still in Intensive Care, but hopefully will be going to the ward soon.
After several operations of relieving the pressure on his brain, he is now breathing on his own and communicating.
It is hard to know at this stage if there are no side affects & he will probably have a long time in Rehab.
Thank you again for those who prayed, much appreciated.

Please pray

Please pray for a good family friend of mine.
He has just had a growth on his brain removed & came out of the operation okay.
But has gone downhill from swelling on the brain.
Please pray for him and his family.