Conquering Pornography - A New Course from Devin Rose

Devin Rose is a masterful apologist with a fire for seeing men become all that they were intended to be in Christ. I want to draw your attention to a new, online course that Devin is offering.

 

Allow me to set the table for you. In this course you will be getting:

• Nine exclusive videos giving you the strategy to follow.
• Devin's ebook, Unbreakable Purity, the guide to conquering pornography
• Access to his Bootcamp, with daily instructions on specific actions to take
• The option of joining a private forum with other men in the course to encourage one another and share tips
• The opportunity to email Devin personally anytime you need support or encouragement

If you or anyone you know is suffering from this addiction, I urge you to take advantage of this course. There is a great deal more to say, and you can view course content more in-depth by visiting Devin's website. May the Lord grant you the freedom you are seeking!

7 ENORMOUS Benefits of Marian Consecration

Each year, I share the 33 days leading up to our celebration of the Immaculate Conception with St. Louis Marie De Montfort, going through his preparatory exercises to renew my consecration to Jesus through the heart of Mary. I've written of this consecration before, describing it as asking the Holy Spirit to knit our souls together with Mary's so that we can participate in her complete love and surrender of herself and all that she was entrusted with to her Son. Today, though, I wanted to share the seven specific benefits that St. Louis Marie recognized in asking the Holy Spirit to unite our souls to Mary's, in offering to Jesus (True Devotion, Nos. 213-225):

1. We are communicated a portion of Mary's profound humility, and this allows us to see ourselves as we truly are: sinful, weak, completely dependent upon God's grace.
2. We will be given a share of Mary's unrivaled faith.
3. Our hearts, like Mary's, will become free of scruples and servile fear.
4. We will be filled with Mary's great confidence in God, and we will approach Jesus arm-in-arm with Mary.
5. Mary will reproduce her Magnificat in our hearts, her ability to "rejoice in God, her salvation" (Lk. 1:47), and to praise and thank our Lord.
6. If Mary, the "tree of life" is cultivated in our souls then, in time, we will bear the same "fruit" in our lives - the Lord Jesus.
7. By loving Jesus in union with the most perfectly consecrated of all of His disciples, we will give Jesus "more glory in a month than by any other practice, however difficult, in many years."

Those are some truly enormous benefits, wouldn't you say? The Communion of Saints is an amazing reality.

GUEST POST - Pope St. Gregory the Great

Yesterday I shared how I felt called to consider the sinful attitudes that lurks beneath the surface.  Today we have a message of hope and encouragement in that regard from a giant of the Faith, Pope St. Gregory the Great.  Coming to us from the Liturgy of the Hours, Pope St. Gregory speaks of the transformation we undergo not just as individuals but corporately as the Church.  At present we are that field composed of wheat and weeds, but the Kingdom will come in all its fullness:

Since the daybreak or the dawn is changed gradually from darkness into light, the Church, which comprises the elect, is fittingly styled daybreak or dawn. While she is being led from the night of infidelity to the light of faith, she is opened gradually to the splendor of heavenly brightness, just as dawn yields to the day after darkness. The Song of Songs says aptly: Who is this who moves forward like the advancing dawn? Holy Church, inasmuch as she keeps searching for the rewards of eternal life, has been called the dawn. While she turns her back on the darkness of sins, she begins to shine with the light of righteousness.

This reference to the dawn conjures up a still more subtle consideration. The dawn intimates that the night is over; it does not yet proclaim the full light of day. While it dispels the darkness and welcomes the light, it holds both of them, the one mixed with the other, as it were. Are not all of us who follow the truth in this life daybreak and dawn? While we do some things which already belong to the light, we are not free from the remnants of darkness. In Scripture the Prophet says to God: No living being will be justified in our sight. Scripture also says: In many ways all of us give offense.

When he writes, the night is passed, Paul does not add, the day is come, but rather, the day is at hand. Since he argues that after the night has passed, the day as yet is not come but is rather at hand, he shows that the period before full daylight and after darkness is without doubt the dawn, and that he himself is living in that period.

It will be fully day for the Church of the elect when she is no longer darkened by the shadow of sin. It will be fully day for her when she shines with the perfect brilliance of interior light. This dawn is aptly shown to be an ongoing process when Scripture says: And you showed the dawn its place. A thing which is shown its place is certainly called from one place to another. What is the place of the dawn but the perfect clearness of eternal vision? When the dawn has been brought there, it will retain nothing belonging to the darkness of night. When the Psalmist writes: My soul thirsts for the living God; when shall I go and see the face of God?, does he not refer to the effort made by the dawn to reach its place? Paul was hastening to the place which he knew the dawn would reach when he said he wished to die and to be with Christ. He expressed the same idea when he said: For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.