FILIPINO TRADITIONAL ROMAN CATHOLIC: The Illusion of Self-Sufficiency

Thursday, February 4, 2010

The Illusion of Self-Sufficiency

"Conversion to Christ, believing in the Gospel, ultimately means this: to exit the illusion of self-sufficiency in order to discover and accept one’s own need – the need of others and God, the need of His forgiveness and His friendship. So we understand how faith is altogether different from a natural, good-feeling, obvious fact: humility is required to accept that I need Another to free me from "what is mine," to give me gratuitously "what is His." This happens especially in the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist. Thanks to Christ’s action, we may enter into the "greatest" justice, which is that of love (cf. Rm 13, 8-10), the justice that recognises itself in every case more a debtor than a creditor, because it has received more than could ever have been expected."

- Pope Benedict XVI on His Lenten Message

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A 13 years old boy............. in 1983, but now I am a golden boy, gaining weight and wiser, but younger at heart. I consider myself as a “novus ordo baby” because I was born in the late 60s after the 2nd Vatican Council introduced the novus ordo missae and grew up confronted by the confusions as a result. Like my generation I never saw what the church was like prior to Vatican II, but I am a living witness to the gradual disappearance of religious traditions we hold dear. Young as I was then I could not understand what was going on. But I suffered the sense of loss as I saw how the modernizing influence in the church disfigured the liturgy and clouded the way we believe and practice our faith. But then being a child, powerless, not knowing what it was, and why it happened, I simply drifted into the sea of confusion, too young to understand. With a glimmer of faith in my heart, planted by baptism and confirmation, strengthened by the sound teachings of my parents and grandparents, I sailed into the sea of life, day after day, seeing the changes happen, feeling the sense of abandonment, yet God was merciful to me. In 2005 I discovered the Traditional Latin Mass or commonly known in the post-conciliar period as the Tridentine Mass. I began to love the rite of mass that has nourished my ancestors, the saints and the martyrs. I am eternally grateful to His Holiness Pope John Paul II for recognizing the rightful aspirations of Catholics attached to the ancient forms of the Roman Rite through his apostolic letter ECCLESIA DEI DI AFFLICTA. I am also eternally grateful to His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI for liberating the Traditional Latin Mass through his apostolic letter Summorum Pontificum. I fully agree with the program of his pontificate regarding the Hermeneutics of Continuity and disdain the hermeneutics of rupture. Today I consider myself a Traditional Roman Catholic attached to the liturgical discipline of 1962 as outlined in the Motu Proprio SUMMORUM PONTIFICUM of his Holiness. I believe that there is only one Roman Rite, the Ordinary and the Extraordinary and that the Mass in whatever form should be celebrated with dignity. My voyage is on. Join me in this quest.

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FILIPINO TRADITIONAL ROMAN CATHOLIC

Thursday, February 4, 2010

The Illusion of Self-Sufficiency

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The Word Made Flesh

Tu es Petro (You are Peter...)

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