Freedom’s Trumpet

It’s late but I’m posting anyway, along with the 30 or so other million blogs. Merry Christmas to all.

I feel conflict in my home library. Two books arrived yesterday. One is Roman Catholicism, the antiCatholic bible by Lorraine Boettner and the other is the Adoremus Hymnal.

There’s no conflict. In one I wanted music and I wanted to destroy the other, in a sense. From what I can tell it will be harder to learn the hymns. The other book seems worthless, except for the influence it and a couple of other books have in some circles of Christian hate groups.

We’ll see how well that works out. The Christmas season has begun. I hope yours is beginning and not ending today. God bless you and your families.

The wait is almost over, but not quite yet. We still have more gifts to buy!

It’s Advent. The manger is empty. Mary is looking into the empty manger, waiting obediently for the coming of her Saviour, who saved her from before her birth. She is too humble to bother with why. She just waits, like any expectant mother, for the time when the crib will comfort her glorious Son. When she can hold him close, supporting his small head and neck because His neck is still too weak to hold His head up. He’s Christ, Emmanuel, but He’s coming to us as a child, weak, human, needing the support of His loving mother and the care of Joseph, who has agreed to care for this special Child who is coming to the world.

While chatting with some YouTubers one atheist brought up Mother Teresa and said that she was an atheist when she went to meet God.

I’m not going to expound on this for very long, because I’m going to encourage you instead to get the book with her letters and find out for yourself. In the book you will find, many times, when she said that she felt cut off from God. She felt a spiritual darkness.

Mother Teresa led a life that most of us couldn’t possibly identify with. We have small moments of pain in our lives, occasionally someone dies, or we see strife, or abuse of some person, but Mother Teresa worked intimately with countless thousands of some of the poorest, most abused people on the planet. They are stuck in a caste system that discriminates against them because of the family they were born into. Most of us can’t even begin to compare our sufferings to theirs. She worked in the very bowels of society. How can you not experience spiritual darkness when you are immersed in human tragedy every day of your life?

Yet, through it all, she did keep her faith. Time and time again in the writings you’ll see that she embraced the darkness. I will quote one small excerpt regarding an account from 1996, during the last year of her life here on earth.

“That year, what suffering she had! I never saw in my life the physical suffering that Mother put up with. She could not talk, she could not move with the respirator and bronchial tube fixed with cello tape …

Ultimately, one morning Mother wrote, “I want Jesus.” We asked Father Gary to come that morning, early, at 5:00 a.m. After the Mass he was just able to give her a drop of the Precious Blood. She began to improve.”

I apologize if I quoted too much and will remove that upon request, but that is a powerful statement of faith. They understood immediately what she was asking for, and it shows the profound effect that even a single drop of the Blood of Christ had on this saint that the media, and Christopher Hitchens, tried to portray as an atheist, when she was and is nothing of the sort. An atheist would not have asked for the Blessed Sacrament and they would have received little or no benefit, unless the Lord wished to create a special witness by healing and converting the hard of heart.

I don’t expect an atheist or most people to take that little bit as full evidence that Mother Teresa kept her faith throughout her life. I just put it there for those of you who might already understand what it was that she was asking to receive and to understand the profound faith that led her to make such a request.

If you wish to buy the book with her letters you can do so from most bookstores, or by clicking on the following link –

Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light

I would personally prefer it if you could check with your local Pauline or other local Catholic bookstore for that book. They’re usually run as part of a shrine or at least by a Religious Order and contact with Sisters and Brothers is good for your soul That and they need your support more than I do. I have a job that I get paid for already.

But if you must buy it from the internet that link takes you to Amazon.com, and I do get a little bit of the proceeds, albeit not much.