For this Lenten Season: Pray without ceasing

Today is Ash Wednesday and it marks the beginning of the Lenten Season and it is a day of fasting and abstinence. Hmmm, that means that we Catholics must learn to put on the brakes in our fast lane life to ponder and reflect on the Passion and Death of our Lord Jesus Christ and perhaps more importantly why God allowed his only begotten Son to be born of the Blessed Virgin Mary and become man and why he had to be tortured and die in the most gruesome way in order to save humanity from sin.

Last Monday, during our Sons of David weekly mass, Fr. Ricky Ordoñez (son of Del and Marilou Ordoñez) officiated the Holy Mass and his homily focused on the Lenten Season. He gave an anecdote about a woman in his Parish who always told her friends that after every lunch or dinner, not to hand over their fork to the waiters for the best dessert is still to come.

When the old lady passed away, the congregation came to her wake and inside her coffin she laid serene and peaceful still holding a fork. Her message was simple but clear that death isn't the end of life as the best is still to come. Indeed, eternal life or Paradise should be our focus and objective. Fr. Ordoñez gave us that story because he too wanted to impart on us that the Season of Lent doesn't end with Holy Week, with the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus Christ on Good Friday.

While the Lord may have died on the cross, however he triumphed over death when on Easter Sunday, our Lord rose again from the dead and with his glorified body, met once more with his disciples and stayed with them for 40 days before he ascended into heaven. As the old saying goes, "Before things get better, things often had to get worse."

This is much like taking a good medicine, which is bitter in taste, but it will improve your health. But the Passion and Death of our Lord Jesus Christ is not going to help your health any as all this refers to our spiritual health, which more often than not, most people ignore.

To put yourself in the mood for the Season of Lent, it is better that you start with increasing your daily prayer. The message of our Blessed Mother to the three little children in Fatima was "Pray, pray, pray without ceasing." Speaking of the apparitions in Fatima and the current events happening in the world today, notably the presence of Russian Troops in Crimea, Ukraine, one cannot help but recall the four chastisements prophesied by Our Lady of Fatima. They are war, famine, persecution of the Church, and persecution of the Holy Father the Pope.

As Catholic writer Antonio Socci who wrote the book "The Fourth Secret of Fatima" once said, "To give you a peek of the future, all you need to do is read the message of Fatima." Indeed, the first chastisement was War. When the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared at the Cova di Ira on Oct.13, 1917, the 1st World War was already winding down. But since the Blessed Lady's request to consecrate Russia into her Immaculate Heart was not heeded by the Pope in the Vatican, World War II soon erupted and Sister Lucia who was already a nun in the convent saw the Aurora Borealis as the sign of the start of World War II. The Aurora Borealis can only be seen in Northern Europe.

The second chastisement has already happened where a great majority of the people on this earth is still experiencing hunger and no matter what the United Nations World Programme has done this problem is still happening around the world. The civil war in Syria has caused unprecedented food shortages causing hunger amongst the refugees. Hunger was the reason why the people of Tacloban looted the closed stores.

The third chastisement is persecution of the Catholic Church. Indeed, Catholics are under siege in Africa, in China, and even in Russia where most of them are Orthodox Christians and Russian Troops' are poised in Ukraine where its people have a good number of Catholics. We have a new Superstar Pope under Pope Francis, however when he openly spoke against abortion, the liberal media suddenly pounced on the Catholic Church for being too secretive about the sex scandals committed by gay priests.

Finally the fourth chastisement predicts the persecution of the Holy Father not only outside the Catholic Church but inside the church as well. By now you must have known that Pope Francis has broken away from the centuries old Vatican Curia that literally ruled the day-to-day life of the Pope. Indeed Pope Francis is having a revolution within the Vatican walls.

So at this point we ask you to pray for Pope Francis so he can push for the consecration of Russia into the Immaculate Heart of Mary so that finally, her prophesy that we would have world peace would be fulfilled. So for this Lenten Season let us pray for forgiveness of one another and pray hard without ceasing as this world needs our prayers at this time. Remember Russia has already invaded Ukraine. It just gives me the chills that if the United States fails to check Russia, therefore the US cannot also stop China.

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