Takashi Nagai: Prophet of Nagasaki

Every year, on August 6, throngs of people converge on Hiroshima and hold political demonstrations and rallies, many of them characterised by noisy anti-West slogans. Three days later, another group of people gather in Nagasaki to pray for reconciliation and peace. Many Japanese say, "Hiroshima is anger, Nagasaki is prayer." This is the legacy of a once proud atheist who, through faith and trust, embodied the poverty of spirit and inner strength of Jesus Christ, the unblemished Lamb of God.
-The Word Among Us

I never knew that.. Nagasaki was "the home of the Japanese martyrs;... the home of the largest Catholic cathedral in Asia, the home of Japan's largest and most vibrant Catholic community."

Jean

Can Criminals Hide In Churches?

On the tradition of religious sanctuary.
http://www.slate.com/id/2147879/?GT1=8483

Jean

BIG MEETING!

HEY GUYS!!!!

The ACTS is back...our first big meeting would be on:
15TH AUGUST 2006, 5.15PM at LT2
The theme is: A CALL TO COMMUNITY
SPEAKER: FREDDY GOMEZ (AMPLIFY MINISTRIES)

Check us out on the 15th, bring a friend along and have your own personal JESUS ENCOUNTER!

St. John Vianney, the Cure of Ars

Memorial: 4 August

"If people would do for God what they do for the world, what a great number of Christians would go to Heaven."

"My little children, reflect on these words: the Christian's treasure is not on earth but in heaven. Our thoughts, then, ought to be directed to where out treasure is. This is the glorious duty of man: to pray and to love. If you pray and love, that is where a man's happiness lies.

Prayer is nothing else but union with God. In this intimate union, God and the soul are fused together like two bits of wax that no one can every pull apart. This union of god with a tiny creature is a lovely thing. It is a happiness beyond understanding.

My little children, your hearts, are small, but prayer stretches them and makes them capable of loving God. Through prayer we receive a foretaste of heaven and something of paradise comes down upon us. Prayer never leaves us without sweetness. It is honey that flows into the souls and makes all things sweet. When we pray properly, sorrows disappear like snow before the sun.

Some men immerse themselves as deeply in prayer as fish in water, because they give themselves totally to God. O, how I love these noble souls!

How unlike them we are! How often we come to church with no idea of what to do or what to ask for. And yet, whenever we go to any human being, we know well enough why we go. And still worse, there are some who seem to speak to the good God like this: "I will only say a couple of things to you, and then I will be rid of you." I often think that when we come to adore the Lord, we would receive everything we ask for, if we would ask with living faith and with a pure heart."

"Prayer is the inner bath of love into which the soul plunges itself."

-Saint John Mary Vianney/Jean Marie Vianney
Patron Saints Index: Saint John Mary Vianney

also see our post on the play: http://cjctheacts.blogspot.com/2006/04/cure-of-ars-play.html

Jean