40 DAYS FOR LIFE

40 DAYS FOR LIFE


The kick off rally is this Tuesday, Feb. 24, which is also Mardi Gras (so eat and get fat) it will be at St. Dominic's parish hall in Benicia from 6:30 pm. There will be a few speakers and lot's of food. please invite your family and friends.
[potluck and/or donations are greatly appreciated. You may also get a 40DFL t-shirt for a donation of $10]

40 days for life will begin on Ash Wednesday 2/25 to Palm Sunday 4/5 from 5 am to 10 pm.
Remember that our precious unborn brothers and sisters need our prayers so please, as a lenten sacrifice, i would like to challenge all of you to commit at least 1 hour every 168 hours a week throughout lent (only 5 1/2 weeks).

Please email me <angelarubang@gmail.com> if there is a particular hour that you would like to come so that I can put you on the schedule. Of course, you can always drop by anytime, but if you can commit to a particular hour in the week, it would be helpful to have you on the schedule so that we know someone won't be by themselves (which rarely happens, but just in case)

You are also welcome to join us in fasting every Thursday (the day when abortion procedures are performed here in Vallejo) throughout lent.
"Fasting is like an atomic bomb!" -Bridget DeMers (40DFL core member)

Let us flood Heaven with prayers for our precious unborn brothers and sisters and continue to fight this battle against the evil of abortion!

May God bless and be our guide through the desert!
Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us.
Our Lady of Victory, pray for us.
St. Michael the Archangel, pray for us.


"Through fasting and praying, we allow Him to come and satisfy the deepest hunger that we experience in the depths of our being: the hunger and thirst for God."
-Pope Benedict XVI's 2009 Lenten Message

Read more...

"Fullness of Truth ... is Powerfully Attractive" - Ministering to Young Adults

Fr. DiNoia, OP NAC:
Clearing Away The Barriers:
Preaching to Young Adults Today
- Click Here FrDiNoiaOP_NAClecture

A few of Sean's fave quotes from Fr. Di Noia's lecture:

"No one in his or her right mind will be interested in a faith about which its exponents seem too embarrassed to communicate forthrightly"

"We have to be convinced that the fullness of the truth and beauty of the message about Jesus Christ is powerfully attractive when it is communicated without apologies or compromise"

"In our conversations with young people, we have to avoid the temptation to fudge -- to adapt the Catholic faith so as to make it palatable to modern tastes and expectations"

"This so-called 'accommodationist' approach generally fails, and it fails doubly with young people. There is a risk in this approach that the Christian message becomes indistinguishable from everything else on offer in the market stalls of secularized religious faith"

Read more...

A walk down memory lane aka i love free speech

Sigh. Although my memories aren't publicized on youtube, or quite possibly this intense... this video did remind me of the type of freedom of speech we cherish in our country.

Who do I have to side with, or what views do I have to take again for people to listen to me... oh yeah that's right religion is dumb, hey even morality is a sign of ignorance. NO SPEECH FOR YOU.

This was a common occurrence when I went to school. Anytime a pro-life speaker tried to do a presentation or civilly dialogue they would just get screamed at, called a terrorist, called ignorant. Rarely did anyone who was pro-abortion have a rational, civil discussion. Based on my experience it usually ended up in attempt at denigration, rather than debate.

sigh. pray.



Let's hear it for democracy. So when people REFUSE to listen to the arguments of an opponent, tell me again, where does the ignorance lie? What happened to the days when college campuses existed as places that fostered an environment for intellectuals to debate civilly and rationally, rather than shouting things like, "Tell me when you get pregnant!" Reminds me of a concept I used to chuckle at while I was in school before... What's the opposite of DIVERSITY?

UNIVERSITY.

sigh. sad.

Interested if anyone knows more about this video or presentation at St. Mary's. Not sure which St. Mary's this is, though.

Read more...

Disease of Catholic Dissent

You can read the entire post over at Acts of the Apostasy, but Larry D presents 5 diseases that Catholic Dissenters appear to have. It's humorous... but sadly there might be some truth to it.

Here is an excerpt:

2) Cataractechesis - this is a vision problem with dual symptoms: seeing things written in the Catechism that aren't there, and not seeing the things that are there. A derivative of this illness is Scrapture, where Biblical passages that challenge the patient's questionable lifestyle choices are scrapped.

and

5) Meemyselphaniophagia - a bacterial infection (Spiritus Vaticanus II) whose symptoms include, but are not limited to, the following: speaking in gender-neutral language; convulsions (often termed 'liturgical dance'); mental incoherence (typically expressed as historical revisionism); and a general abhorrence to anything 'traditional' or 'patriarchal'. If this is untreated, it can mutate into Iamdapopa carcinoma, a spiritually fatal condition.

To read the entire article, click here.

Read more...

YA Relationship Stuff

That's how I celebrated Saturday, with my good friends, seminarian brothers, Rence and JR, and a new friend Anton (future seminarian =]). Yup, you see that correctly. That is lbs of triple chocolate brownie with nuts and a block of the greatest rice chocolate, marshmallow concoction in the world. [not pictured Rence's $20 worth of dipped strawberries]

For those of you not in the seminary, namely those of you in relationships, you may have celebrated differently. maybe.

On that note, being a young adult and dealing with relationships is nary an easy thing.

You have to be willing to work at it, and you both have to have your eyes focused on God. If you forgot, here is the line from Passion Play last year, "True love isn't about gazing into each other's eyes, it is about focusing together in the same direction - hopefully toward Christ."

The Feast of Sts. Cyril and Methodius, I mean vocations awareness day I mean, Valentine's Day came and went. After all the flowers have withered and the balloons have deflated, what have you left? Hopefully, love. And I mean true love. The sacrificial, self-giving, I-Choose-Love type of love. That is, the "love your Bride like Christ loves His Church" type of love. Bloody. Beaten. Love.

The other day a friend called me concerned that she feels she just says "I love you" too much, almost every time she sees her significant other. She felt it might be losing meaning. I feel I was truly inspired by the Holy Spirit, because I humbly feel these words are better than anything I could have come up with without God. I responded, "the words 'I love you' will only lose their meaning if you speak them more with your lips, than you do with your actions."

In your relationships, love like Christ loved. Stop sweet-talking. Stop buying gifts. Choose. Do. Sacrifice.

And to end it off, you all are blessed back home with some recent and upcoming occurrences that could have and can greatly help in the growth of your relationship.

For one, If you went to mass on February 9th, you may have heard a great homily by Deacon Bobby on Marriage, for World Marriage Day. If you missed it, no worries. There's a link here.

"The giving of self completely, the sacrificial love of marriage can seem to be impossible. Of course, on our own - it is impossible. But with God - it is not, nothing is impossible with God."
-- Deacon Bobby Peregrino

Another opportunity for you to grow in your relationship is the Theology on Tap on Feb. 20th: FROM ADAM & EVE TO BRAD & ANGELINA: A Scriptural Guide to Dating and Relationships with Carson Weber. I can't urge you enough. If you are in a relationship and you would love to explore how you can make it holier and center it on God, GO TO THIS EVENT. If you want to hear a great Catholic Speaker who studied under Scott Hahn, GO TO THIS EVENT. If you want an opportunity to discover what it means to love via the scriptures, GO TO THIS EVENT. If you want to make raj jealous, GO TO THIS EVENT.

Read more...

Theology on Tap: FRIDAY, FEB. 20th

FROM ADAM & EVE TO BRAD & ANGELINA: A Scriptural Guide to Dating and Relationships

"The Lord God said: 'It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a suitable partner for him.'...The Lord God then built up into a woman the rib that he had taken from the man. When he brought her to the man, the man said: 'This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; This one shall be called 'woman,' for out of 'her man' this one has been taken.' That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body." (Genesis 2:18, 22-24)

SPEAKER:
Carson Weber, 30, is the Director of Evangelization for the Diocese of Sacramento. This native of San Antonio attended Texas A&M University where he earned a BBA in Information Systems; he also holds an MA in Theology and Christian Ministry with an emphasis in Catechetics from the Franciscan University of Steubenville. Carson is the loving husband of his wife, Rebecca, and the proud father of their one-year-old daughter, Thérèse Mary Grace. One piece of advice about boys he would give his daughter: don’t grab their noses or poke their eyes.

WHAT: Theology on Tap is a Catholic speaker series for young adults (ages 18-39).

WHO: Anyone over 18 can attend. However, Theology on Tap is geared towards young adults in their 20s and 30s.

DATE: Friday, February 20th

TIME: 6:00pm, fellowship; 7:00pm, talk begins

PLACE: Zio Fraedo's Restaurant (23 Harbor Way, Vallejo, CA 94590)

COST: FREE. But we strongly encourage you to patronize Zio Fraedo's, our generous sponsor.

BABY ITEMS COLLECTION:
At the last Theology on Tap, we began a collection of maternity clothes as well as baby items (e.g. toys, clothes, blankets, cribs, new car seats, etc.). These items will be donated to Life Abortion Alternatives Ministries (LAAM) and to Alpha Pregnancy Resource Center. You can still bring in your donation to this month’s Theology on Tap. Your generosity is appreciated. Thanks!

Read more...

Oh those Canadians love freedom of speech

/end sarcasm

With an attitude that is becoming less and less surprising in the land of mounties and maple syrup, "University student union revokes pro-life students’ club status."

My favorite part:

At the hearing on Tuesday, CPL secretary Asia Strezynski repeatedly asked the committee chairwoman Alex Judd to name the policy that the club had violated but the committee “only referred to a bylaw that gives the Students' Union the right to punish a club for violating policies or bylaws,”

Basically, uhm, you did something wrong, because it says that we can punish you for doing something wrong. Logical, I know. Sigh.

Ok, so I know this happened in Canada, and not America, but it might as well be the same the way things are going. I remember getting into it with friends about things like this when I was a student at UC Davis. How do we define "Freedom of Speech"? Because it seems like someone (that someone definitely not being me) has a monopoly on what type of speech is really FREE, what speech is sorta FREE, and what speech is you-really-can't-say-that-FREE. Baaah... it's so backwards.

I used to wonder what type of freedom we really had in this country, when I never felt comfortable speaking about my faith or morals in particular settings - where people are often criticized, and often silenced as the case is here, if they even mention anything close to something religious or morally right.

Long live free speech.
Long live free prayer.

"If the world hates you, realize that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, and I have chosen you out of the world, the world hates you."
--John 15:18-19

Read more...

Quote frome Rome

I'm a little late on this, but with all the craziness going on in Rome, and the Catholic world as a whole, and in my life as well, you can't really blame me.



But here's a quote from Rome that speaks volumes:

"If this is one of the first acts of President Obama, with all due respect, it seems to me that the path towards disappointment will have been very short."
-- Archbishop Fisichella of the Pontifical Academy for Life, stating his displeasure with President Obama's "arrogance" in rescinding the Mexico City Policy.

Read more...