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Suffering - Making sense of it by Mother Angelica
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Our actions have eternal consequences...when you talk about habitual
sin... If you think when you get old, you will dedicate your old bones to
God, guess again, you may be too senile to think about that... Our world
emphasizes feeling good, you gotta live for today, have fun..."joy to the
Millennium"...there is no joy unless you are getting closer to God. If you
are not keeping His Commandments..He knows you, how you operate, how you
operate well. God gave you free choice...you make bad decisions..repent
now before it's too late. You say the church always scares you...the church doesn't scare anybody... The church leads you to high holiness, to heroic virtue...the church has a right to tell you when you are in grave danger... We look at suffering as totally useless, to be avoided.. God has designed a certain degree of holiness for each one of us, designed by God from eternity. It's all designed like a giant puzzle... Everything, even bad decisions, tragedies, good things, static things...work all together for this degree of union with God, happiness and joy for all eternity... When we stop people from breathing because we're tired or its expensive or anything else, we may be cutting short that suffering , but we might be making their purgatory much longer...we might be cutting short that degree of holiness that's been destined for them for all eternity. You see we cannot make these eternal decisions. Embrace your cross..it's not going to take away the pain, the fear, the loneliness- whatever..we got to take it in our hands and say, "I embrace this cross because it's Your gift to me..." When we get to Heaven, we'll see all the why's and wherefores of our
lives and that's why no one has a right...when you terminate a birth, you
cut off that person's opportunity to arrive at that degree of holiness God
has intended for them...when you decide that this person has lived long
enough or when you decide you have some illness now and so you are going
to commit suicide , you're cutting yourself off from God...don't do that!
Trust God, trust Him. For all of you who are suffering, we pray to
understand that the Son of God had to suffer - are we better than the
Master? About Mother Angelica - after dedicating herself to the Lord as a Poor Clare sister, she founded a branch of a cloistered order after founding EWTN, the TV station which brings the Gospel to millions of people daily, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Mother suffered a very crippling ischemic stroke in 2001 and since, has been bedfast - she is almost 90 years old and enjoys watching EWTN from her bed. For a person who was not only very intelligent and talented but very charming and articulate, it must be great suffering, indeed, to not be able to speak or move but when asked why she thinks God is allowing this suffering, she says "for my salvation!". (She calls it "God's allowed Providence") Those who have visited her, say she remains in a positive, cheerful mood.
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