The sky is not falling…

It is Holy Saturday for real today, even though we have been living in Holy Saturday mode for over 3 weeks. The proclamation of the Resurrection is about to begin, so today is the day to record the positives from this time.

The origin of this extremely contagious and debilitating virus doesn’t matter, but the grace of the pause, of the taste of divine rest, of a time of fallowness does.

Sadly a lot of people aren’t getting the message to slow down, as evidenced by the erratic driving of some people seen when we have ventured out for groceries. What on earth could they possibly be in a hurry to get to?

In reality we are only catching up on all the Sunday-Sabbath rests we have ignored for countless years, and by God’s grace are beginning to get a taste for again. The Christmas Day quiet of suburban streets is lovely to experience.

Nature seems to be getting a bit of a rest too, with smog and pollution levels decreasing.

While it may seem quiet on the surface, there is a lot going on behind closed doors and in the depths of hearts.

The great majority of our usual distractions, football codes, theatre, restaurants, sport, libraries, local pubs, gyms, and even our church activities have closed down. People are having a chance to distance themselves from things that they were previously addicted to. Additionally they are finding that some of those things, like trips to the ice cream parlour or binge watching TV series, just aren’t satisfying them anymore.

In this time of pause, away from the normal bustle and busyness of life, there is evidence that people are reconsidering the whole God question. Those church communities that had existing online outreach, or quickly got their acts together, are reporting massive increases in viewer numbers for online church services. Granted some of these viewer numbers are not from the local area, and some are there because their own congregations don’t have anything online to offer, but many are seekers.

Reports are beginning to come in from those whose lives have been touched through these online ministries, and they include atheists and those with faiths other than Christian.

There is also evidence that the quality of family life is improving. This includes spouses reconnecting with each other. It includes the hearts of parents reconnecting with their children, and vice versa. Around the dinner table at meal times conversation is increasing. People are trying out new recipes, getting the jigsaw puzzles and board games out, and getting small to medium do-it-yourself home improvements done.

Many people have been on steep technology learning curves in order to stay in touch with each other and to be able to work from home. Rethinking is going on about how to run businesses better and clever people have begun re-purposing businesses to include home delivery, online ordering and adjusting product lines. For others rethinking their working lives is a necessity because the jobs they had before are unlikely to return.

The way we learn is changing too. With the aid of materials prepared by teachers and others, lots of parents have been thrown in the deep end of home schooling. The early responses were of gratitude to teachers, ‘I’ll never complain about you again’. But the longer this pause goes on, the more those responses are going to change. Parents will know exactly where their children are struggling and will be asking more perceptive questions of teachers. There will be parents who discover that their children are learning better and faster at home than they did at school. There will be children who discover that learning at their own pace, without the competitive peer pressure, suits them.

We won’t be going back to the normal we knew.

What might the new normal look like?

I think we are going to see a lot of No’s. Of people standing up and saying No, I am not going back to that, and having far less patience for the mediocre they used to put up with.

All of us have sampled online Masses and other church services from places other than our home parish. We’ve heard much better preaching than we have in years, and better choirs and liturgical observance. Far more of us are no longer going to be backward in coming forward and saying, ‘Father, you just have to do better. We need better preaching than this!’

There is likely to be anger, too. Anger at the non-communication from parishes that stopped printing parish bulletins, stopped putting parish bulletins online, and didn’t have existing email and Facebook networks. Our older members, who don’t have technology, will be feeling the most abandoned.

There will be others, I daresay mostly women, who will say ‘No, family really is my priority, I don’t want to go back to a toxic working environment’ and who will pioneer ways to set up cottage industries from home.

There will be families who will say, ‘No, I’m not sending my children back to school, this home-schooling thing is really working for us’. Definitely families will re-evaluate just how many extra-curricular after school activities their children will be involved in, and choose less of them.

There will be people in high pressure jobs who will say, ‘No, I can’t live like that anymore, it is detrimental to both me and my family’.

Hopefully communities, regions and states will take a good long look at where they found themselves to not be self-sufficient, and to take steps to rectify that, especially in manufacturing and production of medical supplies.

Are we ready for the new normal?

Do you remember that interesting prophecy about the three waves?
https://www.openheaven.com/2018/07/10/three-waves-of-a-coming-baby-boom-and-strategies-for-preparation-by-christy-johnston/
Firstly of prodigals, then of babies, and then of more babies.

When the social distancing restrictions are lifted, our churches will be overflowing, due to the number of returning prodigals and seekers. Are we ready to welcome them? Do we have resources in place now to assist an extra 200 to 2000 people who seek baptism and discipleship?

Do it now.

Remember the parable of the 10 bridesmaids, the ones who came with extra oil went with the bridegroom, the rest missed out.

With the lack of other things to do, and more time to improve and restore relationships, you can bet that we will see a physical baby boom from December 2020 onwards. Order your baptismal registers and certificates, baptismal candles etc now. Leave it till Oct/Nov and you won’t be able to get any. Train up extra baptismal preparation teams now, via Skype or other online interfaces if necessary.

Order extra marriage registers and certificates and paperwork too. Cohabiting couples will decide to marry. Marriages made outside the church will seek convalidation.

There will be more couples seeking to straighten out their tangled lives with God, so increase your orders of annulment paperwork too.

Then as the reconciliations with God take place, and healings begin, watch for that second baby boom of miracle babies to previously infertile couples to happen. Yes, you really do need to start ordering baptism related supplies now, and double what you first thought of.

This is the divine reset, back to God’s plan for Himself first, and family second.

The sky isn’t falling, it is about to turn the right way up for the first time in a very long while.
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Rejoice.  

​There are a lot of 'high expectation' prophetic words flowing around online in Protestant and non-denominational circles at the moment. Gauging what is happening in prophetic word from Catholic circles is very difficult, because it doesn't get shared online unless there has been some heavy duty discernment. However the more I read, and ponder and pray, a possible interpretation emerges that has implications for both sets of circles.

Of course, I could be completely wrong, and maybe something even more wonderful is afoot behind the scenes.

Some of the recurring themes are increase, acceleration, breakthrough, harvest, letting go of the old and taking hold of the new, surrender and humility as the path to these treasures, an army prepared for battle, the opening of doors and deep wells, an invitation to more, an invitation to intimacy and lingering with God, hunger for God, sudden divine appointments and sudden divine alignments, new mantles of gifting and of authority, huge release of resources, growth coming from unexpected directions.

What if you looked at all of these themes through the lens of the journey home to the Catholic church?

Under this lens the need for acceleration makes sense. Why? The process of the journey home to the Catholic Church is normally slow and gradual stretching over 5, 10, and in many cases 20 years or more. With special grace that process can be accelerated.

The same can be said for the initial process of conversion to Jesus, it is usually slow and gradual too. Sudden conversions like what St Paul experienced are infrequent. But since the messages are for those who are already Christian, maybe God does want to accelerate the process of the journey home to the Catholic Church.
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Part of that process is the stirring of the heart to want more of God, and to be dissatisfied with anything less. I'm going to quote from Nate Johnson here, because he describes it well:
I want to be honest...I haven't been satisfied for a long while now, and I could pretty much say I have been like this my whole life. Always peering around the corner, curiously wanting to see what was to come and living in the tension of what is now and what is to come. But there is a LONGING for more that myself and many others are experiencing right now which has been very different.
One morning in early December, I was so overcome with the presence of God that out of me came this cry of: "I want more Jesus, I want more!" I was not saying that He was not enough or that I was ungrateful, but it was something He was doing in me to reveal the untapped vastness of His person – His glory – that I was not yet experiencing or seeing others experience.
It was a dissatisfaction that ran so deep that it seemed like all other appetites evaporated or waned instantly in light of the hunger that was erupting from my spirit. God began to show me that in this season He is rolling back the curtain and the veil, so we can see what is available. He is calling the Church out of stagnancy and "church as usual" to develop the appetite we were designed to have...for the unlimited riches of His glory!

Does this feel to you like a hunger that could only be satiated with the Eucharist?

It does to me.

Another part of that process is the discovery of ancient sources of renewal that are available to all, but few people know how to find or to value them. For example, the places hallowed by the prayers and lives of the Saints, the writings of the Early Church Fathers, the writings of the Doctors of the Church, the Sacraments, sacramentals (medals, holy water, icons, scapulars etc), the hymns of St Romanos the melodist and St Ephrem. Could this be what the Holy Spirit is referring to in these words from Michele Stickells?

I saw an angel stirring the waters, then I hear, The angel is stirring up the waters of ancient wells, that have become dry and redundant. I see it's time that God wants to restore the wells that hold the ancient anointing, to bring forth the end time anointing that will bring revival. I also see mantles lying in the dust, waiting to be picked up; they also carry past and ancient anointings. The Holy Spirit is moving across the nations looking to see who will see what He is doing, and be ready to receive from past ancient anointings that have remained dormant and hidden for an appointed time, for it takes an ANCIENT ANOINTING TO RELEASE THE END TIME ANOINTING !!!

At the same time there are various calls to lay down our own agendas and ideas and those things that have worked in the past, and to pick up God's plans. Nate Johnston explains it like this:
I had a vision of a hot air balloon that is being fired up to take-off, but it was being held down by sandbag weights all around it. I heard the Lord say, "You have to lose your sandbags to ascend." Then I began to see many obstacles in the spirit that many of us experience when God is inviting us to ascend. To my surprise, they were not just fears, worries, and concerns, but they were more like concepts. They were things like holding onto old patterns and ways of thinking – not wanting to shift from the way God was moving to the new way He was flowing and taking us. These sandbags were also the mindsets of wanting to stay behind the wheel and control the direction of our lives, the process, and orchestrate the outcomes. Not yielding to the Holy Spirit stops the fruit from growing. It's an interesting thought that you can look like you are full of fire and ready to go, but without letting go of the old and surrendering to the shift, you stay grounded. LET GO, and watch Him build and increase you beyond your own means.

And Lana Vawser explains it like this:

I had a powerful encounter with the Lord recently and in this encounter I saw Jesus and He was inviting the Pioneers into the most beautiful room in the library of heaven. The interesting thing about this room in the library of heaven was the door was VERY SMALL. The door was tiny, so to “enter into this room” and to move into the invitation the Lord was releasing, there was a significant call to “lay down, and go low”. There was a deeper place of surrender, humility and yieldedness to the Lord that had to take place, it is not a place of “striving” to “be humble” but a recognition that He is Lord, and we are not. He is the One who we hand the reigns over to, to lead, to guide, to speak. We hand the reigns of timing over to Him. We hand the reigns of “the way” over to Him. We hand the reigns of how things are “built” over to Him, it was a place of such deeper surrender to Jesus and trusting Him in His way and timing. The beautiful thing is I could feel so strongly in the invitation to continue to ‘lie down’ and ‘go low’, is the plans, purposes and manifestation of what He is building is bigger than what is even being dreamt about by the Pioneers.

What could be harder or more difficult than to lay down any anti-Catholic sentiments and to yield any long held teachings that are not truly biblical? And yet what is more necessary for true growth and the finding of untold treasures of grace?

So if you are a Christian and odd things seem to be happening in your life that are pointing you towards the Catholic Church, receive them as invitations from God to the more that He has for you and start to investigate what the Catholic Church actually teaches. If you are looking for a starting point, remember that burning question that you shelved because you couldn't get a satisfactory answer? Take it out, look at that question again, and find out from reputable Catholic sources what answers the Catholic Church has to that question.

So if you are Catholic start talking and thinking about what your parish would need, and what would need to change if the number of people wanting to do the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (R.C.I.A.) multiplied by ten. What would you need to do if it multiplied by a hundred? Start working on increasing the budgets, recruiting and training additional R.C.I.A. team members, and gathering the resources that the spiritually hungry are going to need when they arrive.

Mary, Mother of the New Pentecost, Star of the New Evangelisation, pray for us.

Write Non Fiction In November : #WNFIN Day 30
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On this last day of the Writing Challenge, some reflection upon the last 30 days is called for. Did I see what I hoped to see during this month of November, disappointingly No.

If you remember, I had hoped to chronicle the promised great outpouring of the Holy Spirit. If it is going on right now, then it is nowhere to be found in my neighbourhood and region. In fact, compared with the beginning of November there have been more setbacks and closed doors.

Perhaps the only thing gained is a better understanding of how the prophetic words, if they are genuine, fit together. So here goes my interpretation:

Whatever is going to happen is going to be completely God initiated. The most we can do is to prepare our hearts as best we can, and continue to pray. One image used was divine fire coming down from heaven and igniting some chosen hearts and not others. Another image used was of wildfire angels bringing this transformation to individuals. Upon those for whom this happens, there will be given extraordinary purpose and anointing to accomplish that purpose, and they are likely to be young people, people who have been through trauma and times of great testing, people who are normally overlooked or ignored, and some that you'd expect to have been too worldly like socialites and members of bikie gangs.

Whatever is going to be initiated by God is going to go a long way towards denominational unity, but not without a fair bit of denominational chaos. Many of you have read the stories of how the Catholic charismatic renewal started. Think about how you would react if 20 people from diverse backgrounds walked into your church praising God like King David did, preaching, prophesying and healing people. Are you going to join them, and fall on your knees to pray for guidance in how to work with this movement or grace? Or are you going to find extraordinary new sympathy for the chief priests and elders who had to deal with the growing aftermath of the first Pentecost?

Another certainty is that it won't be taking place in a vacuum. Of the things that have happened this November the increasing secularisation of society, the public rejection of God's blueprints for happy human life, and increasingly public displays of hatred toward Christianity are quite notable. For God's people to withstand the pull to be liked and popular and safe - there has to be an increase in God's active power in the lives of believers. It is not too hard to see a separation taking place between those who actively believe in God and those who want freedom from anything to do with God – just read the comments on social media. Any middle ground between these two sides is rapidly diminishing, and everyone will have to confront the necessity to choose. Without the special graces from God no one would have the strength to endure martyrdom and persecution.

Something we have witnessed this November is the exposure and removal of corruption, especially in the entertainment industry and in politics. It stands to reason that you can't build new structures of grace to buttress a world-wide conversion to God unless you first dismantle the structures of sin and conspiracies of malice.

On the one hand we have people declaring breakthrough, and victory, and new authority and new ministries, increase and acceleration and an end-time harvest. Whether this is solely an evangelistic harvest of souls to active faith in Jesus or whether this is a harvest of all the sowing that has taken place in tears in the fields of family, parish, education and employment – or both, is unclear. I hope it is both.

What harvesting actually means in this context and how to do it, that's a mystery. All of my tentative steps to bring some God stuff into conversation have yielded nada on the scale of visible results. If the harvest is indeed great and ready, surely there would be big response to just about any effort. Maybe that's just epic fail on my part due to lack of courage to rock the boat by questioning the dubious moral situations many of my acquaintance are in.

On the other hand, there's a more recent theme in prophetic word that you won't get the goodies (breakthrough, harvest, abundance, rewards) unless you battle with the enemy to attain them. In effect, the promised goodies are the spoils of warfare.

What warfare actually means in this context, and how to do it, well that's another mystery. It could be the spiritual warfare of intercession, praying in union with others that God would bring down and destroy all the strongholds of the enemy. It could be the daily battle to believe that God cares and is preparing great and wonderful destinies when all you see around you are broken dreams, disappointments, and the aridity that comes when there are no answers to prayers and no obvious explanations for why it feels like God is ignoring you and that you have been completely abandoned. It could be deliverance ministry. It could be all of the above.

Over and over there have been other themes of surrender to God's will, of resting in Him and not striving, of seeking a deeper walk of intimacy with Him. In the light of the themes of divine fire they make some kind of sense. To be able to host the presence of God at a level like this will indeed require massive preparation of the heart.

Another recurring theme is, 'Are you ready?' This bit made more sense over the last 24 hours when reflecting on Mark 13:33-37 and the call to stay awake. Have you ever had a relative arrive home from overseas? You know they are coming, but due to customs and traffic delays, you have no idea exactly when. If you want the best bit of their homecoming and the freshest sharings of their adventures, you have to be there when they arrive. If you have dozed off and need to be awoken, you will have missed the best bit. If something happens and you only get to hear them retell their story for the 2nd, 3rd for 4th time, then you aren't going to get it all. With each retelling, it gets shorter and less enthusiastic. So in the same way, those who are ready when this great move of God happens are going to be light years ahead of the rest of us.

Which brings me to all my fears: that I will get bypassed and not included in the company of fiery ones; that those who sow will not get to reap; that I will never have the requisite praise, humility and gentleness and that whatever the criteria is that I'll never get there and never get there in time. There was a specific warning that those who have preached about and longed for these days could miss out completely due to a sense of entitlement. That rocked me to the core.

So if you have some spare time to pray for others, please pray for me and for my dearest ones.

The battle, if that is what it is, is fierce. If you have been accounted as useless and not worthwhile knowing and can't remember how long it's been since you felt God took an active interest in providing a heart-stopping encounter with His love, how can you find the audacity to believe that this situation can change dramatically for the better? Because knowing darned well without that kind of faith and trust it isn't going to happen, and that you haven't got it and it feels cruel that without any ray of light from above that you have somehow got to rise above all the hurts and wounds and get there. How is this a most loving gift and invitation from a tender-hearted God? I don’t know. But supposedly it is. You might quote, 'God only tests those that He loves', which is probably true, but not at all helpful if you are living off general promises made by Him to everyone and you have no personal, specific promise of your own from Him to cling to.

All we can do is thank Him that in the psalms and canticles there are sufficient examples of people complaining to Him and lamenting His seeming absence and disinterest in our troubles – because it means it is OK to add our own, and that they must be acceptable to Him somehow.
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Come Holy Spirit. Amen.

Write Non Fiction In November : #WNFIN Day 22
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The lights are going off.

In the past weeks and months I've read a lot of articles on line, and many of the comments attached to them. For the faint-hearted, it is not. There are levels of barely restrained anger and malice that I haven't seen before.

In the midst of all that madness of competing 'rights' and no concern for the associated responsibilities I came across a reminder of an interview that took place a few years ago. At the time there had been an ugly schoolyard massacre in the USA, and people were asking 'Where was God?', 'Why did He allow this to happen?' The answer was along these lines: that if you remove prayer from the schools, if you remove the teaching of the 10 Commandments and the life lessons from the Bible from the schools, in effect expelling God from such schools, then there's nothing to stop these atrocities and even worse ones from happening again. God has gentlemanly manners, He helps when He is invited to and doesn't force Himself on anyone. When He is rejected, His ability to help becomes severely limited because He respects our free will so much.

The sad thing is that this scenario seems to be playing out across the societies we live in.

The very people who want to trample over the rights of another to conscientiously object to doing something they consider morally wrong, only have this freedom of speech because in times past people of good will steeped in the truth that humanity was made in the image and likeness of God (and thus giving each human life true dignity) fought for this freedom for everyone. In a totalitarian regime freedom of speech is one of the first things that goes.

As we have expelled God from more and more areas of our lives, the lights that once kept out the darkness are going off.

We have forgotten that the formal definition of hell is the utter absence of God, and of all the truth, beauty and goodness that is His.

It seems we are going to be seeing more of that on earth.

In the novel  'An Echo of Things to Come' by James Islington there is this description of a dark realm:

'There was a screeching cacophony until it could be borne no longer; there was an empty, swirling silence that left a desolate panic bubbling uncontrollably inside of him. There was searing pain and icy wretchedness. There was misery and anguish and bottomless loss. There was no relief….What you saw was a moment, a memory from a man, one that came at the cost of his sanity….I don't know how to describe it…Nobody does. The best I have heard it explained is that it is an absence. It is what it would be if there was no joy, no life, no light, no hope. If everything, - everything, - that made this world a comfort to us was stripped away, completely and utterly.'

Once upon a time the media sought for truth and balance and excellence. Now the media seeks for click-bait and sensationalism, and editors fact check so rarely and permit copying so often that fake news has become the norm. A light has gone off.

Once upon a time social media postings were from real individuals. Now you don’t know whether the postings originated from a foreign government think tank designed to provoke disunity. A light has gone off.

Once upon a time protecting the innocence of children was a sacred duty. Now when they barely reached the age of reason they are bombarded with the complexities of human sexuality and gender fluidity. A light has gone off.

Once upon a time people wished each other a Merry Christmas and not Happy Holidays, they sang Christmas carols about a baby in a manger and put on annual Christmas nativity plays. Now our shopping centres and day care centres won't put up nativity scenes in case they offend someone. A light has gone off.

Once upon a time when people spoke about marriage they spoke of husband and wife. Now it is almost an act of subversion to celebrate the anniversary of a married heterosexual couple, or to speak of Mother's Day and Father's Day. A light has gone off.

Once upon a time the medical profession were revered and trusted because they vowed to always do no harm and always seek to save life. Now governments are charging them with the responsibility to help kill the vulnerable and the sick. A light has gone off.

Once upon a time if a person was elected to government office they were expected to have some loyalty to the party that assisted them. Now you take your seat as the party member one day and declare you are an independent the day after. A light has gone off.

Once upon a time churches and religious statues and Christian leaders were respected. Now it is increasingly okay to let acts of vandalism of religious property go unpunished and to insult the representatives of God. A light has gone off.

Once upon a time a person was innocent until proven guilty by a judge or jury. Now it is trial by media, with the implicit verdict of guilty until proven innocent, and the impossible difficulty of finding unbiased jurors. A light has gone off.

How many lights have to go off?
How deep does the darkness have to get before our hearts cry out for the light?
How full of horrors does the darkness have to become before we humbly go in search of the source of light?
How bad does it have to get before we plead for God to return to our lives, and to our communities?
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O God of love, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, forgive us, help us, rescue us, save us. Amen.

Write Non Fiction In November : #WNFIN Day 5

This one is going to be a ramble, and we'll see where we get taken because after many, many tries I couldn't find the topic on my own.

Why is it that so many hopes end in a whimper and not a bang? Over the last few days there's been a 'prophetic summit' in another part of the country. I held out such great hopes for it, but very little has been released about it online yet. I started watching a video clip and found lots of thank you's, a collection of offerings and a bit of an altar call, and no sense of where the rest of the hour plus long video clip is going. So until I find both the time and the patience to watch the rest of it, it will be in the 'yet another disappointment' category.

But at gatherings like those are where our missing generations are. There's very rarely a grey hair among them, while there's very little health and vigour among us – just lots of wisdom, experience and well tested commitment. How could two such disparate groups come together without imploding or exploding disastrously? We know that God loves both groups, and unless there are partitions in heaven, they are going to have to coexist there somehow. Obviously God has a plan to keep harmony in His heavenly realm, so theoretically there is a practical solution that will work on this side of eternity too.

It is something that we need to work for and to pray for. It is not good for either group to be without the balance that the other group would give, despite how rocky the road to unity might be.

We must believe that our octogenarians and our nonagenarians are extraordinarily precious in God's sight, and that's He's not finished with them yet, and that they have a vital role to play in what God is bringing to birth in our era. They are the ones who have prayed and wept as they have seen children and grandchildren and great grandchildren, nieces and nephews, grandnieces and grandnephews decide to live as if God doesn't exist. If there is to be a massive harvest of souls, these are the ones who have prayed the price for it. Why must it be that those who sow in tears rarely get to see the harvest they worked so long and hard for with? Without these holy elderly ones and their prayers and sufferings our world would be much worse than it is. They are the ones who have kept the lamps burning and the lights on so that when the great return begins, there is something to return to.

This brings me to the modern generation of mums and dads. I will be unexpectedly facing a small cohort of them in two days' time. By and large we don't see them worship with us, but there's still just enough faith for them to bring their children to be prepared for the sacraments of initiation or – more likely - as an 'insurance policy' to get their children into faith based schools. These parents have been entrusted by God with these school aged youngsters, and He certainly expects them to be the prime teachers of faith in Him to these little ones. Sadly the children tend to get taught by parental example that sport and extracurricular things like dance classes and martial arts, as well as financial and social success are far more important than the things of the soul and the things of eternity.

How do we reach both parents and children? What can crowbar open their hearts to let the remembrance of God in with enough power to transform behaviour and morals? Only the Holy Spirit is capable of such a feat. Just diligent praying isn't enough. Sadly the most fruit I have seen is an occasional parent return once to the confessional, but never be seen again after the preparation classes are over or after the child reaches high school.

For this too God must have a solution if we pray and work for it. He alone knows what will unlock their hearts to Him, and we must seek Him for those solutions and strategies.

I do know that it is hard to deal with the anger resulting from so much wasted effort for so little reward and even less gratitude. Sometimes it feels like a swarm of locusts come to eat whatever they can find and then leave. We have so few able bodied faith-filled people to lead these sacramental preparation classes, and as you can guess the gradual demoralisation of these good people at the paucity of response to these magnificent sacraments of God is an ongoing tragedy.
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May He who has the effective solutions to these two big troubles of our age rise up and come to our aid! May He come swiftly and reply. May He put to flight and crumble all of the barriers the enemy has set up over the years. May we see Him work in power in this season and begin the great return of the prodigals. Amen. 

​Write Non Fiction In November: #WNFIN Day 1

Why am I writing?

A friend declared that together with some of her home schooled children, they were going to do NaNoWriMo this year and write Fiction. My son is good at Fiction too. But alas dreaming up stories and writing them down isn't my forte. Non Fiction is. So I am going to keep them company during November.

What am I writing about?
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Well that's a long story. Do you believe that God communicates with people, and directs them in their daily individual and corporate lives? I do. However telling what is truly from God, what is only human wishful thinking, what is a mishmash of both and what is malicious requires greater levels of the gift of discernment than I currently have. But when a great number of these messages from disparate sources have common themes – it is worth paying attention. That said, it is possible to be collectively wrong big-time, and that (thank you for explaining this St John of Avila) is a punishment from God. It is very easy to be deceived, especially when 90% of good is mixed up with 10% of bad.

In some sort of a nutshell, if the prophecies of our day are to be believed, then we are at a turning point in world history: a turning point that will see the greatest mass evangelisation that the world has ever seen. If this is true, then since it didn't observably happen at the 50th anniversary of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal in February, nor at the 100th anniversary of the first apparition of the Mother of Jesus at Fatima in May, nor at Pentecost in June, nor at the 100th anniversary of the great miracle at Fatima in October, nor on the 500th anniversary of the start of the Protestant reformation, then we might start seeing the promised tsunami of grace in November, and if so, it would be worthwhile chronicling it. So in some respects it is an act of faith, and the risk is that these 30 days of November will be filled with disappointment and misery as each day brings nothing out of the ordinary.

One of the mini threads of prophecy is that some will be doing lots of writing under a special anointing from God, and that writing will also help depth the movement of the Holy Spirit in and with us and give greater clarity and understanding as things 'accelerate'.

I have already been journalling a bit during October, but not every day, and most of it contains the rantings of a heart disappointed yet again that nothing of this promised massive move of the Holy Spirit happened that day.

Will I / we recognise it when it comes?

This is a question I have been wrestling with. On the one hand there are threads of prophecy saying that things will change suddenly and massively, a la breakthrough, as swiftly as Joseph was taken from prison and made prime minister of Egypt. On the other hand there is a smaller thread saying that the most massive moves of God start tiny and almost imperceptibly, like the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem and like the small mustard seed that grows into a huge shrub.

There is a strand of prophecy from Catholic sources that is rarely referenced in non-Catholic sources, and that is persecution and days of darkness. Maybe that's because by and large Catholics are more familiar with persecution than the rest of our Christian brethren. Maybe that's because Catholics have a fuller grasp of the moral abyss our world is hurtling towards as the culture of death gets welcomed into government legislation and the culture of life gets outlawed. How sad it is that we only start fighting for truth and peace when they are severely threatened. Church history is littered with moments of great truth revelation and deeper clarity in response to heresy. When what we believe comes under threat it is like giving spinach to Popeye the sailor man, and we grow stronger in what we believe. 'The blood of the martyrs is the seed of faith' is the truism Catholics live by. Or if you prefer an Old Testament example, each time the Israelites came under further levels of persecution by the Egyptians of Moses' day, they increased in number and power – the opposite of what the Egyptian rulers wanted to see happen.

A further strand of prophecy is about new open doors and God given assignments to bring about the reign of His kingdom in both secular and religious society. As someone for whom the search for an open door has been long, painful and fruitless, this matters. I have no confidence that if it came and hit me on the head and started blinking in neon lights whether I would recognise it. Although it would have to be that obvious, and far more, for me to take the risk of bashing myself into yet another locked door. St Vincent de Paul endears me to him because he would wait and wait until it was truly obvious that God wanted him to do something, and then it was full speed ahead. I need that God given certainty, without it all our efforts are as dust and ashes, with it any mountain can be scaled and moved.

At the same time there is a strand of prophecy that speaks of looking out for the unusual and not expecting God to work as He has in seasons and eras past. Nothing we can manufacture will make any difference, only God's plans, strategies and momentum will. This strand echoes two thoughts from speakers which have bounced around my head for months. The first is that the spiritual weapons that we used yesterday cannot win the battles that we face today, each battle needs its own specific weaponry. The second is that people, and specifically generations are different. What worked in bringing young people to relationship with God 10 years ago is no longer working, because they are a different generation of young people with different values and experiences and challenges than their older cousins. We need to trust God that He knows the precise strategies that will work.

Other

Over all these strands of prophecy stands perhaps the most important one – a call to deeper intimacy of relationship with God. Any big building needs a deep foundation. There are spiritual laws that must be obeyed, and one of them is that the greater charisms cannot be given without some corresponding effort on our part. As a wise man said, 'They don't fall from heaven like apples'. However they do come to those who choose to take God more seriously in his or her life, and who take the necessary steps to make that happen. We have to ask, and we have to persevere in asking for them, as the Gospels tell us. Ten minutes of prayer a day over a month is going to yield very different results to thirty minutes of prayer over 5 months.

Today is the feast day of All Saints, of every person who has walked through the pearly gates of heaven and has been permitted to stay. The Book of Hebrews tells us that these cloud of witnesses are praying for us. Likewise the Book of Revelation speaks of the prayers of the saints rising like incense before God, begging Him to bring the fullness of His kingdom into reality. At some point the prayers of all those happy, holy inhabitants of heaven have to outweigh the wickedness and godlessness on earth and begin the reclamation of the kingdoms of the earth for God.
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May it be so.
May it be now.
May we see it happen.
Amen.
(and Alleluia).