Halfway Between Here & There

fighterofthegoodfight:

pilgrimofsjg:

What kills me with feels in this photos isn’t the fact that the Pope is embracing this disabled child. It it the multitude of hands that are supporting him. This is very much in line with the story of Jesus healing the paralytic. His friends risked climing that roof to lower him in front of Our Lord. It was their faith that this man called Jesus that would heal their suffering friend that allowed him to be healed in the first place. Though Pope Francis doen’t have the power to heal this boy through Christ he does have power to heal hearts. How many of people these hands belong to have been strengthened in their own faith and, how many of the people who witnessed this have been healed as well?

Seeing this picture of Dominic, the son of a college professor I went on a mission to Haiti with, all over the internet today makes me so insanely happy.

pilgrimofsjg:

What kills me with feels in this photos isn’t the fact that the Pope is embracing this disabled child. It it the multitude of hands that are supporting him. This is very much in line with the story of Jesus healing the paralytic. His friends risked climing that roof to lower him in front of Our Lord. It was their faith that this man called Jesus that would heal their suffering friend that allowed him to be healed in the first place. Though Pope Francis doen’t have the power to heal this boy through Christ he does have power to heal hearts. How many of people these hands belong to have been strengthened in their own faith and, how many of the people who witnessed this have been healed as well?

Seeing this picture of Dominic, the son of a college professor I went on a mission to Haiti with, all over the internet today makes me so insanely happy.

(Source: joecatholic)

"Do not accept anything as truth if it lacks love
and do not accept anything as love which lacks truth."

— Blessed Pope John Paul II (via fathershane)

creepykeyla:

NORVEEEEEENNNNN.

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it up careful round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motion-less air - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable… The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers of love… is Hell."

— C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves (via kristennsmith)

"Love looks to the eternal. Love is indeed ‘ecstasy,’ not in the sense of a moment of intoxication, but rather as a journey, an ongoing exodus out of the closed inward-looking self towards its liberation through self-giving, and this towards authentic self-discovery and indeed the discovery of God."

— Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est.

Anonymous asked: Do you not feel like the catholic faith is out-dated? Your views & morals belong in the past. In the world we live in, yes there is evil in countless forms, but part of that evil is catholic faith. Believing you have more rights to a woman’s womb than she does? That is evil. Believing that someone is ‘inferior’ or ‘unholy’ because of whom they love, that is evil. I just can’t help but wonder why, if Jesus promoted love and acceptance, the catholic faith is still discriminating against others.

fathershane:

I agree with you!

Believing that anyone has more rights to a woman’s womb than she does is evil.

Believing that someone is “inferior” or “unholy” because of whom they love is evil.

Jesus promoted love and acceptance.

Catholic views and morals belong to the past.

But I think we can agree on even more… Take for example our premise that the unborn child is a person. So if you’ve got a tiny daughter-person dwelling in a woman’s womb, the woman can have rights over her womb, but not over her daughter’s life. It’s vaguely like someone who says that, by virtue of private property, he can burn down his shed whenever he likes; but if a bedridden handicapped person happens to be in it at the time, the law won’t be indifferent to that. I don’t think we’re disagreeing about rights over a woman’s womb, but about whether the daughter there is a person or not. Isn’t that the real disagreement? Maybe if we phrase it that way, we can get somewhere better.

If we were to call someone “inferior,” we would fault against Matthew 23:9, and if we were to call anyone “unholy,” we would fault against Matthew 7:1. And most especially it’s prohibited in our Catechism: “Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard [homosexual persons] should be avoided.” Personally I’ve never called anybody “inferior” or “unholy” (at least as far as I can remember), which would be rather absurd for anyone whose life is dedicated to trying to build others up and get them to heaven.

So I wonder what exactly you’re thinking of when you say that we’re guilty of discrimination. I know it’s what you hear about all the time from everywhere, so it’s not your fault for thinking so.

But yes, our views are from the past. And I believe — that’s what this blog is all about — that our views are for the present and the future too, because “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8), so either we’re just as wrong as we were yesterday as we’ll be tomorrow, or we were right then and we’ll be right forever.

But be that as it may… let’s love and accept everyone together, you and I. Sound good?

God bless you!

- Father Shane

waltdisneyconfessions:

‘One reason Beauty and the Beast is my favourite Disney Princess movie is because she seems to spend several weeks with the Beast and they gradually fall in love, which is more realistic than the other movies where it happens almost instantly’

"The real choice in accepting or rejecting a child with special needs is never between some imaginary perfection or imperfection. None of us is perfect. No child is perfect. The real choice in accepting or rejecting a child with special needs is between love and unlove; between courage and cowardice; between trust and fear. That’s the choice we face when it happens in our personal experience. And that’s the choice we face as a society in deciding which human lives we will treat as valuable, and which we will not."

— Archbishop Charles Chaput (Philadelphia)

(Source: archphila.org)

"Years ago, my dad owned a black 1934 two-door sedan. Well, this is what he told me: there was this really cute girl, see? She used to go for rides with him in his car. And whenever he’d call for her, he would always hold open the car door for her. After she got in and he had closed the door, he’d walk around the back of the car to the driver’s side, but before he could get there, she would reach over and press the button, locking him out. Then she’d just sit there and wrinkle her nose and grin at him. That’s what I think love is."

— Charlie Brown [Snoopy, Come Home, 1972] (via aforaffort)