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REDEMPTIVE SUFFERING

LIVING LAMPS BLOG

Consoling the Heart of Jesus in Our Suffering

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What the Church Teaches about Heaven
Terri Thomas Terri Thomas

What the Church Teaches about Heaven

Every soul who has died in the love of God will enter heaven, either immediately after death or following a purification in purgatory. All souls will be perfectly happy in heaven, but some souls will enjoy a higher degree of happiness than others.

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Are You a Reservoir or a Channel?
Terri Thomas Terri Thomas

Are You a Reservoir or a Channel?

“Do not just be a channel for grace, but a reservoir, an overflowing reservoir. No sooner has a channel received grace than it pours it out. A reservoir waits to be filled up and then offers grace to those who come to draw from its superabundance” (St. Bernadette).

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Combating Hedonism by Living the Message of Fatima
Terri Thomas Terri Thomas

Combating Hedonism by Living the Message of Fatima

Our Lady came to Fatima to begin the formation of her “A Team” – a team of new “missionary disciples” who would be bright lights in a time of darkness, and by living an authentically Catholic life, would mission to people who had received a perverted form of the Catholic Faith through Modernism; disciples who would allow Jesus' victory over the Strongman to be fully effective in their lives. She knew it wouldn’t be easy for them because Hedonism – a direct consequence of Modernism – has infected everyone. The antidote is to respond to her urgent call to prayer, penance and reparation.

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My Mother Was a Priest
Terri Thomas Terri Thomas

My Mother Was a Priest

We were all shocked and shattered when my brother announced that he wanted to become a priest. It was not just that he wanted to become a priest, but he wanted to become a Cistercian priest. That meant that once he left home he would never return. Naturally my mother was totally bereft.

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Taking Up Our Cross
Terri Thomas Terri Thomas

Taking Up Our Cross

Luke 9:23-25 ‘If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross every day and follow me. For anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake, that man will save it. What gain, then, is it for a man to have won the whole world and to have lost or ruined his very self?

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Pope Saint John Paul II and the Cross
Terri Thomas Terri Thomas

Pope Saint John Paul II and the Cross

After concelebrating Mass with the Holy Father in his private chapel, a priest from Michigan had a brief opportunity to meet the Pope. The priest had a broken leg and stood on crutches as John Paul approached him in the receiving line of guests. He said to the Pope with a twinge of humor and self-pity, “I broke my leg. Can I please have your blessing?” John Paul replied, “Don’t waste your suffering.” The Holy Father raised his hand, blessed the priest, and then with an open palm, thumped the priest on the head (From St John Paul the Great: His Five Loves – by Jason Evert).

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What Does It Mean to "Offer It Up?"
Terri Thomas Terri Thomas

What Does It Mean to "Offer It Up?"

Teresa of Avila, in her book The Way of Perfection writes:

"Everything I have advised you about… is directed toward the complete gift of ourselves to the Creator, the surrender of our wills to His, and detachment from creatures…For we are preparing ourselves that we may quickly reach the end of our journey and drink the living water from the fount."

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