For their short pithy brilliant whimsical way of saying things, I love to collect Twitter and other Quality Quintessential quips, quotes, questions, musings and maxims from the furthest reaches of the internet to the obscure book hidden in the dusty corner of some long forgotten book store and save them for a rainy day post. I just might need some wonderful wordful beauty to express a sentiment or idea in what I’m writing so I created this particular post with that purpose in mine.
Tweeting to the Choir: A Collection of Tweets
Janet@Mystagogy1013: Tweeting to the choir gives us all support and encouragement, which is much needed in these days.
This peculiarly particular post is the offspring of that larger post with a more specific focus in mind from a topic listed in that larger post. It is also but one of the many children of that post. You can go big or go home to this shorter post and pluck what you need from the collected treasure of the Broad Chorus of Catholic Thinkers and similar like minded individuals and insert it into whatever it is your working on at the moment. Or perhaps you just might want to read a short something that will put a chuckle, a prayer or a nifty thought into your brain. And perhaps any truth beauty or goodness may leak into your soul making you a more loving, faithful and hopeful person and draw you closer to Christ.
In this post were Tweeting to the Choir about…
The After Life
Memento Mori
Ed Latimore@EdLatimore:
Remember that no matter what you do, you’re going to die.
And unless you do some Jesus or Hitler level crap, no one will even remember that you were ever alive.
You’ve only got 40 or so more *good* years on this rock.
Naths@nathu147: “We’ve all got a terminal disease. It’s called life.” —Benedict Groeschel
None of us are making it out alive. The earlier we realize this, the better.
Steffi@Schajen: “We cannot avoid dying…but it shocks us…we don’t know how to respond. We can prepare for it by trusting God with our first fruits and with our final fruits…they are externally insignificant but eternally irreplaceable.”@frmikeschmitz @BulldogCatholic Homily
Elizabeth Scalia@TheAnchoress: Have you ever touched the hand of a corpse? Even ten inches above the body, you can feel the cold, the thorough cold, all around. The life is gone. The shell that remains will soon be only dust—sterile, absent of potential, and full of nothing. @WordOnFire Moses’ Stark Choice Lies Before Us: All or Nothing – Word on Fire
TheAmishCatholic@AmishCatholic: A position of greater epistemological certainty. For instance, we have absolutely no knowledge of what happens after death. The data is inconclusive: annihilation, a flash of light, reincarnation, hauntings, purgatory, heaven and hell. We know nothing.
It may seem like a commonplace, but it bears repeating, that our fate after death is a mystery. All we can do is have faith that what we have been promised is true. And to pray for mercy. But none of this is certainty, not even for our own salvation.
Do you know you will be saved? No. For no one can know what comes after death. Eternal hellfire or an infinity of mute blackness or a strange new human life could come instead. The only thing to do is to pray for mercy “in fear and trembling,” placing our faith in the Hidden God.
Souls of the Faithfully Departed
Jackie Francois Angel@JackieFrancois: “In all you do, remember the end of your life, and you will never sin.” – Sirach 7:36 #MementoMori
Emily, praying for peace ���@EmilyKath319: So while in line for confession today (#NoSinGang – feels good!) I was reading the names of former parishioners on the stained glass windows & stations, etc. And I thought, what if the names aren’t there because they want recognition but because they want prayers when they die? So if you are ever waiting in line at Mass and you’re wondering whoever the person who paid for the 9th station might have been, you may as well offer a prayer for the repose of their soul.
And I thought, what if the names aren’t there because they want recognition but because they want prayers when they die?
So if you are ever waiting in line at Mass and you’re wondering whoever the person who paid for the 9th station might have been, you may as well offer a prayer for the repose of their soul.
Fr. Cassidy Stinson@TheHappyPriest: I offered the Last Rites this weekend for a parishioner.
Even as she prepared for her own death, she was still praying for her priests, and the repose of the souls of all her loved ones who had gone before her into heaven.
I hope I have that much faith at the end of my life.
Ashes to Ashes
Fr. Matthew Schneider��@FrMatthewLC·: If we are separated souls for all eternity, then death still has some victory over us.
Instead of a body-less heaven, St. Paul teaches us that we can expect to be body & soul united forever at the final resurrection. #HomilyTweet #TodaysReadings
Hell No
Dare We Have a Conversation About Hope?
Father David Hogman@FatherHogman: In @BishopBarron and Larry Chapp’s conversation, I appreciated the subtle shift whereby the proclamation and the living of the Gospel saves us from the Hell that we are living rather than saving us from a Hell to come. Why else would Jesus pity us when he carries the Cross?
Father Chris Pietraszko@FrChrisP: When we die, our grave dispositions are eternalized. That seems like a long, endless, & tiresome state. That is hell. Resolve now, all resentments, maliciousness and attitudes towards others that fall short of their dignity. Rebuild your relationship with God, in trust.
Steven D. Greydanus@DecentFilms: Objectively speaking, the infinite and absolute God can neither “shove” nor “withdraw” his presence anywhere; by definition, there is nowhere he is not. The common Western idea of hell as the absence of God, then, can only refer to the subjective experience of the Lost.
In the Eastern Churches the fire of hell and the bliss of heaven are often understood as two different experiences of the same reality—the love of God, embraced by the Blessed, hated by the Lost. This very naturally supports a similar concept of purgatory.
But perhaps this isn’t possible either. Perhaps in eternity there is no hiding from reality (love it or hate it), even in the interiority of subjectivity. Or perhaps both are imperfect, complementary ways of expressing the same reality.
Limbo and Purgatory
Steve Skojec @SteveSkojec: If Limbo is a real place of perfect natural happiness where people who’ve been excluded from the Beatific Vision go, why aren’t the souls of all who do not choose God sent there? Why is it that we say these people choose hell? If a man can’t believe, should he be tortured for it?
niko@suckmeoffdumdog: What happens if Catholics were right and ghosts are only the dead people who’ve made it outta purgatory
Haley �️⚧️@pankhearst: Can ghosts exist underwater? Like, is the wreck of the Titanic haunted?
Julie Ryan@jr_truelove1106: Christ revealed to St. Gertrude the Great that each time one person receives Holy Communion, something good happens to every being in heaven on earth and in purgatory
CatholicBard@BardCatholic: The fires of hell, the suffering fires of purgatory, and the all-consuming bliss of beatitude are one thing, the same One. When the soul is freed from the confines, and limits, and filter of the physical body, it rushes back to the Love from whence it proceeded. That soul’s experience of His presence will be hell, purification, or the light of beatitude, depending on its conformity or lack of conformity to God’s love. -Sonja Corbitt Purgatory is a Person – SpiritualDirection.com
Heaven Bound
Bishop Robert Reed �@BpRobertReed: St. Pius X, on getting to Heaven:
There is innocence, but that is for little children; penance, but we are afraid of it; generous endurance of trials of life, but when they come, we weep and ask to be relieved.
The Holy Eucharist is the shortest and surest way!
Sachin Jose@Sachinettiyil: “Do what you will. I will die but I will never let you go.” – The last words of the newly declared Servant of God Akash Bashir to the suicide bomber who came to attack a packed Catholic Church in Lahore, Pakistan, on 2015.
Jolz � Pray for Ukraine ��@Jolz_Aust: I never knew how many people are unknowingly repulsed by God’s mercy until I mentioned that those ‘outside the Church’ can be saved. If you hate that idea then you hate God’s love and mercy.
Emily, praying for peace ���@EmilyKath319: I don’t understand why it’s so hard to grasp that you can potentially be ok with non-Catholics going to heaven without it being religious indifference.
Doesn’t mean I validate their errors, or that I’ll be like “whatever guess it doesn’t matter if I practice or not”
I know from the Church that her sacraments and submission to the seat of Peter are the *known* means of attaining grace for salvation.
Why would I give that up and throw it away just because some people who didn’t have it may have gotten to Heaven by dying for Christ?
John of Arc@JohnOArc1: No one knows who dies outside the Church. One can even answer the strictest interpreters that, in the last moment before separation of body and soul, a person can be miraculously baptized / united to the Church by a saint (for example).
Joy of Heaven
Meg Hunter-Kilmer@MegHunterKilmer: Matthew 25:21
The NAB describes the entrance into heaven with this invitation: “Come share your master’s joy.” Other translations say: “Enter into the joy of your Lord.” I love the imagery of the latter, the idea of stepping into a place that is joy, a joy that permeates me and transforms me. But the former is powerful, too, giving a feeling that the Master’s joy is in some way caused by my faithfulness, that my salvation augments his joy.
Spending my holy hour today imagining this moment, imagining being greeted by him, seeing his face light up, his joy increased by my presence. I’m imagining the joy of heaven, of which the greatest earthly consolation is but a shadow. And I’m trying to let him take his time in bringing me home, but dang. I can’t wait.
#1YearBible day 52
Fr. Casey, OFM@caseyofm: Many Christians believe that Jesus came to redeem not just humanity, but to bring all creation to himself. Some, like me, have concluded that this means dogs will be in heaven.
But forget dogs. If this is true, will heaven have alien species from millions of light years away????
Everyone likes to say that our loved ones are up in heaven looking down at us in a happy, comforting way, but I’m just a little creeped out that idea my nana is watching me all day.
I mean, she can’t see EVERYTHING I do, right…?
For us fair-skinned #irish people that’s abt as good as it gets
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