Faithfully

1. Fr. Robert Barron is a smart guy: watch him defend Eucharistic adoration from accusations that it is "a doctrinal, theological, and spiritual step backward."

2. From Holy Cards For Your Inspiration:

Mother dear,

lend me your heart,

I look for it every day

to pour my troubles into.

- St. Gemma Galgani

3. Fr. Dwight Longenecker on 2012 and the end of the world:

What is it in human nature that loves a doomsday? Why are we so full of fascination and fear about the end of the world?

Two reasons: First of all, because there will be an end of the world. This world is bound up in the matrix of time. There is an Alpha. There will be an Omega. Time began and time will end. One day it will all happen in a crash in a trumpet's clash. Deep down we know this and are always watching and waiting.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, we know for sure that one world will end, and that is our world. In other words, one day for each of us the lights will go out. We'll gasp our last and, if you like, our own sun, moon and stars will be shaken and the dark sea of death will roar and overwhelm us. It is our own end of the world that we fear, and knowing this, yet denying this we project our immanent end on the whole world.

Apocalypticism is a kind of sick obsession. It's a spiritual disease. It is personal fear projected to a cosmic level. What's the cure? Momento mori: Remember death.

If we constantly remember that we will die one day, and if we live each day as if is our last, and if we fear even more eternal death and the sin that will separate us forever from God, and if we strive to live each day in his life giving presence then we will be amazed at how we will have no fear.

Apocalyptic worries will dry up and we'll be able to say with a cheerful abandon--"The end of the world? Bring it on. I'm ready for it!"