Craig's Conversion

I have come to call the world to conversion for the last time and to tell the world that God exists. He is the fullness of life, and to enjoy this fullness and to obtain peace, you must return to God. Today I’m calling you to prayer with the heart…

I would like the world to pray with me these days. As much as possible, to fast on Wednesdays and Fridays and to pray at least the rosary every day. My children have you forgotten. Prayer and fasting will stop war…

If you pray, Satan cannot injure you, because you are God’s children and He is watching over you. Pray and let the rosary always be in your hand. Pray, pray, never stop praying. The world must find salvation while there is time[1].

These words are just a sampling of messages supposedly from The Blessed Mother given to the world through the children at Medugorje, in what used to be Yugoslavia, a Communist country, now Bosnia and Herzegovina. As a junior in high school these were given to me by a friend’s older friend Mike in the 1980’s. The fact that Mike would have even considered going to a place like this was a miracle, for he’d been like the actor, John Belushi in college in terms of carousing and dabbling in drugs or Robert Downey Jr. pre 2000 for those who are younger and have no idea who John Belushi is. Through Medjugorje, Mike had a conversion back to the Catholic faith and even became a priest. Imagine Robert Downey Jr. at the time he was on drugs becoming a priest! God had gotten my attention.

The messages were so powerful and touched me so deeply that I thought there might just be something to this Catholic faith, the watered down version of which I had received was embarrassing to me. These messages scared me, too, because I wasn’t living as they intimated I should be. I’d been given wrong teaching concerning sex in grade school by a priest who had said that everything short of sex was fair game. After trying to live by this morality and failing, and after experiencing the pain that this caused I knew there must be something more, for “our hearts are restless until they … rest in thee, (oh, God)”[2], St. Augustine, and for “only God can fill the soul”[3], St. John Vianney.

As a result of Mary’s words, I started to pray the rosary and to fast in college. Unbeknownst to me, through the rosary, Mary was gaining a hold over my life and slowly leading me to Jesus, which is her role, called her spiritual motherhood. She led me to the point, 3 years later as a junior at Notre Dame, where the thought came, I was going to soon marry my now wife and we were going to have to pass on the faith to our kids and I didn’t even know what we believed, nor why, in spite of 16 years of Catholic education that my parents sacrificed everything to give to me. I needed to find out if our faith was real. Mary then led me to a book called The Faith Explained[4] by a Fr. Trese that after reading it I would have died for this complete version of Catholicism. Through the periscope of The Faith Explained, it was like I could finally see out above water after living on a submarine my whole life, to whole vistas of scenery that I never dreamed possible concerning the depth and beauty and being challenged to live our faith. My life would never be the same!

If you’ve seen the star wars movies you know the entire saga revolves around the character named, Anakin, the most powerful jedi, called to the greatest good, who fell from grace, upsetting the entire cosmic order, who became Darth Vader. Similarly, I learned through this book for the first time at the age of 20, that our Anakin in the faith was a real angel named Lucifer, who was called to the greatest good who similarly fell from grace. He took numerous angels with him to Hell, as well as countless souls in our times too, according to Our Lady of Fatima who said 100 years ago that countless souls go to Hell each day because there is no one to pray and sacrifice for their conversion.

She said “if men knew what eternity is they would do everything to change their lives”[5]. Thus, humanity needed a savior after Adams fall, I learned, because we judge how bad our sins are, not from whom commits them, namely us, but by whom we commit them against, namely, God. If I throw a tomato at a trash man, not much is going to happen to me. If I do it to the president, I’ll be thrown in jail, because his office is so much greater. Well, when Satan tricked our first parents, their sin required infinite atonement to God because his nature, being infinite, requires infinite atonement to satisfy, to make up, for Adam’s and humanity’s sins.

Thus, I learned that I needed Jesus Christ, the second person of the holy trinity to become a true man in history. As fully human He could take my place, but as true God, He could make infinite atonement on the cross on my behalf to God the father. All of this infinite merit and grace from Calvary is then applied to me through the Catholic Church that Jesus founded, principally through the 7 sacraments. Through baptism, the greatest of God’s gifts lost by Adam, God’s grace, or very own life, without which we cannot live forever in union with God in Heaven, is restored, and we are then able to receive the other sacraments.

Thus, with the knowledge of the creation of the angels and their fall, I learned about this whole concept of spiritual warfare between Satan, and his legions, against St. Michael the archangel, who along with the good angels, cast Lucifer and the rebel demons out of Heaven, countering Satan’s malice and delusional pride in thinking he could be God. I’m powerless in this battle because of the devils’ immense power and intellects. But with the communion of saints, the angels and saints that intercede for me, the sacraments, and prayer, I am clothed with the very might and power of God, Himself, the big guns.

With their help, we are equipped for the battle, assisted to help pass this earthly sojourn, our time of testing, in order to hopefully prove our love for God and thus take the places of the fallen angels in Heaven that we were created by God to replace. Now, unlike before, this spiritual warfare starts each day, with my morning prayers.

Mary was teaching me that my life on earth was a school of learning how to love God and just as in school there are different passing grades so too with eternal life. There was something called merit.

As in school, some students fail and never graduate, others have to go to summer school first, and a third group excel with different levels of honors, so too, God rewards our efforts from the smallest to the greatest that we do out of love for Him. In The Faith Explained, I learned, that when we do our actions for God, out of love for Him, they attain a supernatural value, which then entitles the doer to a supernatural reward in Heaven, called merit. That’s why we pray our morning offering, then everything in our day is an occasion of merit and for God, even if we forget . With this newfound spiritual perspective, I was no longer living for myself or the world, everything was now for the love of God. Everything in my life now had meaning and a purpose for the very first time. It’s God’s grace, but He gives it to all and He also rewards the death to self entailed in doing His will and our efforts to receive his grace.

As a result, there are different levels of holiness and reward in Heaven and also different levels in Purgatory and Hell. To understand how one soul can have more bliss in Heaven than another, its analogous to a huge water pitcher and also a measly shot glass filled with the same. Both are equally full, but the huge pitcher has the capacity to hold so much more and similarly with me. The more I give my life to God in this life, through grace, allowing Him to take me over, to lead me further, and to die to self, the more capacity I will have to love and to be loved by Him for all eternity, for God who is infinitely just, cannot be out done in generosity.

Lastly, I learned that all merit and reward are lost if I am in the state of mortal sin and can only be returned when I repent of my sins, particularly in confession. It didn’t matter how much I volunteered until I repented, and that Heaven was too wonderful to ever risk losing for any reason, “for eye has not seen, nor ear heard … what God has in store for those who love Him[6]”.

Concerning mortal sin, through The Faith Explained I had a conversion regarding God’s true design for sex which was completely different from what I was told previously. Sex, Fr. Trese said, was the wellspring of human life. Spoil the spring and spoil humanity itself. This is where abortion comes from, from sex outside of marriage without the protection that life- long committed marriage gives to the unborn child. That’s why God had placed a high fence around sex with the words in bold, capital letters, NO TRESSPASSING. Not because sex was wrong or tawdry in any way, not even because it was good, but because it is so good, it is sacred, it is holy, meaning set apart for God’s designs including the behavior leading up to sex, apart from sex[7]. Being set apart I learned is also what it means to be a Catholic Christian.

Jesus said it best when He said that anyone who looks at another with lust has committed adultery in the heart, meaning anytime I willfully arouse my sexual drive outside of the marital act with my spouse, it is serious matter and sin, if I know it is wrong and freely choose it. And mortal sin is based on 1 John Chapter 5:14 to 17 where it says that some sins are deadly and kill the life of the soul and others do not.

Further, Fr. Trese stated that contraception was also serious matter and sin if freely chosen. At this point I knew that God, through his Church, knew what He was talking about since I had experienced first-hand the pain that had resulted from going against the Church’s true teaching on sex.

I knew that the faith all went together, and although we may not understand it, it is all for a reason to protect us from pain in this life and to sanctify us so that at death we are able to receive our crown of glory in Heaven. Consequently at this point, I was like Peter after Jesus gave His discourse on His True Presence in the Eucharist and His own disciples left him, I was all in one hundred and twenty percent saying with Peter, Lord, where would I go as a result of this teaching, for you have the words and the peace that only comes from everlasting life spent with you[8].

When I looked into this teaching further at the time, I was shocked to learn that not only do contraceptives prevent fertilization, they also prevent the baby from implanting after fertilization, which is an abortion[9]. So I wouldn’t be prolife. Contraception is not prolife.

Secondly, I learned that the act itself is disordered. Meaning, when you take something that’s sacred like sex and linked in God’s design to life and make it common, by deliberately rendering it sterile, you don’t just make it common, you defile the sacred act as well as oneself in the process and commit serious sin. That’s what Onan did in Genesis[10]. He was fine with having sex but was not open to the life that could result, and so he practiced early withdrawal. And it said that what he did displeased God so much, that He literally killed him over it. The basis for the Church’s teaching.

It didn’t take me long after this to realize that the culmination of this teaching, or the counter virtue, is to generously embrace children within marriage. This results in the greatest sanctity of the family and society above all. In other words, society, God showed me, would be transformed or not, to the extent that Christians as salt[11], retain or lose their flavor regarding generously embracing life, in terms of our children as “warriors for the kindom”[12] to be shot out all over the world to leaven the dough of society from within[13], for Christ and His kingdom on earth.

Spacing my children with natural family planning or NFP[14] for “serious reasons” and that’s Pope Paul VI’s, Humanae Vitae[15], actually encourages this. Regarding NFP, there’s no abortion and the act itself is not disordered, for there’s no act; it’s just chastity via abstaining during the wife’s fertile times. It’s not rhythm, its science[16]. It’s marriage insurance, for Catholics who practice it their divorce rate is around 2 percent[17] versus the national average for Catholics that contracept, and Diane Daily, a woman in my parish has been teaching it for decades.

Above all I could see that my crown in Heaven would be one of fatherhood, and my soon to be wife’s, one of motherhood, to the extent that we were generous, and contraception as serious vice would actually jeopardize all of this and getting to Heaven[18]. I call this lady generosity for all the virtues that follow in her train. This call is so beautiful. It is sanctity, or how we get to Heaven, through the cross, all through love and life, or to reverse this, all through life-giving love.

In other words, with all crosses come tremendous blessings and with all blessings come the cross; they’re inseparable, and there’s no greater blessing than our very own children. And if we’re generous, in the process we will lose our very selves, but through it all, we and the family find, and gain Christ, and eternal life[19], that’s the point, and that’s God’s plan. “Let the little children come to me and do not send them away” [20]and “as long as you did it to the least of these, my (baby) brothers and sisters, you did it to me”[21] I realized that this call was impossible by my own strength but I believed at this point that nothing, “nothing was impossible with my God who strengthens me”[22]. This then leads me to prayer and the sacraments.

I never had a prayer life before trying to pray the rosary from the Medjugorje messages. All I did was attend Sunday Mass. Without daily prayer, my faith was weak and the symptom of this was worry and difficulty letting go when God’s ways weren’t my ways[23]. However, I struggled to pray the rosary until I learned about mental prayer which changed my life, which is just getting the gospels, for example, and skipping the dryer parts and merely pausing and taking a little time to think about sections that I was drawn to and skipping the others. This gives God the ability over time, to inspire me with whole vistas of understanding without working for it, merely pausing and sitting with sections that I liked. How could I as a Christian ever hope to be sanctified if I never thought about anything other than this earthly life? So I started to meditate at first with a book, The Imitation of Christ[24], and the faith started to come alive for the first time and this private time with God became so special to me that I always scheduled it in daily, and would never miss it.

Later I found that St. Teresa of Avila stated that Satan will stop tempting souls in the same way that commit to daily mental prayer for a year, because he knows that they are solidly on the path which leads to God and eternal life. Mental prayer was the key that unlocked the rosary as I finally started to receive consolation when praying it, for the heart of the rosary is meditating on its mysteries. To paraphrase St. Louis De Monfort, praying the rosary without meditating on the mysteries is like having a body without a soul[25]. Well I can tell you, that through daily mental prayer, I received the gift of prayer and my soul, and the life of faith, for the very first time, which was more precious to me than gold, and was and is that pearl of great price that no money could ever buy, no moth or rust could ruin, no thief could break in and steal[26]… My Jesus.

After practicing meditation alone, Mary then led me to combine it with Eucharistic Adoration where Jesus is truly present in the consecrated host, and like soaking in the rays of the sun while getting a tan, all we have to do is to soak in the rays of God’s grace and love just by being in His presence in Adoration. When I combined the two it was like mental prayer on steroids. The peace and the consolation and above all love that I felt while there was simply overwhelming. Not all at once, for it wasn’t magic, it was faith. But the more that I went, the more that Jesus strengthened my faith that He was truly there, and the more he revealed the treasures of Heaven contained within His heart.

And that’s the point. Jesus showed me that since He was truly present in the consecrated host, all of Heaven was there as well, in terms of the angels and saints helping me to pray; why it was so much easier to pray there, that Adoration was literally a portal to paradise, the reason why St. Clements, my parish, is so special. Finally I realized that Moses and the burning bush has nothing on our Adoration chapel or any tabernacle for that matter.

God’s kingdom was right here all along. For I had always had communal prayer through Mass, but God craved as did I, that personal one on one time with Him without which my faith, love, and entire life were simply not the same. Just a few measly minutes a day for God for starters is all that it took, although I would stay for hours, and then once per week just doing it in adoration. God showed me that our crisis of faith today stems from the lack of daily prayer, most especially the complete collapse of daily mental prayer and the family rosary among the laity and above all the neglect of Eucharistic Adoration.

Speaking of Mass previously, this now leads me to the greatest form of prayer and sacrament, namely, the holy sacrifice. Did you ever wonder why Mass is called this, the holy sacrifice? Imagine if you were at Calvary when Christ was dying for us. That’s what the Mass is. At the consecration we are literally brought to Calvary and Calvary is brought to us through time and space. It’s the greatest miracle in history, it’s invisible, mystical, but no less real. You see we couldn’t all be at Calvary to unite our sacrifice to Christ’s infinite, atoning sacrifice. But through the sacred ministry of the priest at the consecration, God allows everyone to be there. Utterly Amazing!

This is the reason the saints have said that one’s prayers at the consecration have the most power; why Mary at Medjugorje said we would never be able to understand the Mass’s greatness. Unlike before, now at every Mass I offer my petitions in union with Jesus to the Father via His infinite act of sacrificial love.

I then learned that in the process of the consecration, Jesus is made truly present in the Eucharist. When I found this out, I didn’t know if I wanted to shout for joy or to weep copious tears for how much our God loves us – so I did both, and I am still doing it to this very day. What more could I need in life than a God who loved me so much that He not only died for me, but He allowed Himself to be changed into the form of bread and wine so that He could be with me in every single cell, in every fiber and marrow of my body, and above all my soul, to be entirely made one with me as only He as God could do? “I am the living bread that has come down from Heaven, whoever eats this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world”[27]and now further from St. Paul “for anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgement on himself”[28].

I realized that Mass had not affected me previously, because it wasn’t magic and I’d never prepared beforehand thinking about my unworthiness. After doing this, as well as pouring out my heart to God in communion, and especially after Mass, as opposed to leaving like I’d always done before, practicing the Judas shuffle[29], since Judas didn’t stay after the first Mass either, God gave me so much consolation and peace and His Love that it became a fire burning within me, consuming all of my flaws and vices, my sinfulness and woundedness and steeping me in God’s love and surrounding me with a security and a peace and a joy that nothing in the world could ever give, nor could the world ever take it away.

I had been in the most bloody battle, spiritually, my whole life. Through the Eucharist, God brought me over to His side, I crossed the battle line, mortally wounded, at the brink of death, only to be completely rejuvenated, completely renewed and set afire for Jesus and Mary and His kingdom in this life, unto Eternal Life. Where would I be without Christ’s infinite love for me in the Eucharist?

And He was right here the entire time. Once I knew that Jesus was truly present in the Eucharist, I had fully crossed over from enemy lines and I was home. What more could I want, what more did He have to give? Nothing! He had given His very self for infinite love of me. I who had crucified Him over and over through my sins and ingratitude and ignoring His true presence in the Eucharist. Like St. Paul had said, while I was still a great sinner, Jesus Christ had died for me[30]. He died for me. What more did Our God have to offer? Well, the answer is my second favorite sacrament, confession.

Returning to when I was in serious sin, Mary helped me to return to confession in high school after reading her messages from Medjugorje and God took away in days what I had been unable to do by my own power for months. Jesus subsequently showed me that all of my sins and those of the greatest sinners hadn’t hurt Him as much as our lack of trust that He would forgive us. There is absolutely no limit to God’s merciful love and it is simple trust in His mercy which unlocks it. Through The Faith Explained I later learned that sacramental confession not only forgave sin, but it strengthened me so that I would not sin again, thus, it was analogous to a spiritual vaccine that strengthens me as well as forgiving me. Thus, I realized that if I didn’t make it to Heaven it would be my own fault. “Jesus on the cross already has ‘done my work for (me)’; in the sacrament of Penance (I) simply (gave) God (the) chance to share with (me) the infinite merits of His son” [31]. So I made the decision to attend confession weekly.

Now, I’m going to be honest with everyone. I don’t like to go to confession, nobody does. It’s humbling. But the more you go, the easier it is to do, like anything that’s hard, just like working out. I have a friend, by the way, who doesn’t like to work out, so he never does. He says no pain, no pain. Yeah, no pain now, but so much more later. I want you to see that the reluctance that we all have to go to confession isn’t just human, but rather demonic oppression, for the last thing Satan wants is for Christians to attend confession regularly and thus, to grow in humility in the greatest way, the foundation of the spiritual life, in that we all “fall short”[32] daily and are in need of God’s mercy on a regular basis, “for the just man falls 7 times a day”[33].

At Medjugorje, Mary stated that monthly confession would be a remedy for the Church in the West, that’s us. That’s a profound statement when you think about the many problems of the Church today. She said if confession does not mean anything to us, really, then we will be converted with great difficulty. To quote Jesus to the apostles who were the first priests and bishops of the Church, “whose sins you forgive are forgiven and whose sins you retain are retained”[34]. When I looked back in history, sacramental confession existed from the very beginning of Christianity, the only difference being if one’s sin was public such as adultery, the penitent would be given sacramental absolution only after they had done public penance for the rest of their life. We have no idea how easy we have it today.

Outside of confession, to be forgiven for mortal sins we need perfect contrition. Within sacramental confession, imperfect contrition suffices which is just the fear of losing Heaven and going to Hell. No Catholic should be willing to take this risk with eternal life. To quote St. John Vianney,” the saints did not all start out well, but they all finished well”[35], and the greatest help to finishing well in Christ, is sacramental confession. Above all I want to love God so much more, the more that I go, the more the scales fall from my eyes, the more I’m forgiven and the more I want to love our Lord in return for His great mercy to me, his littlest child, and sinner. “She who has been forgiven much, loves much”[36].

Lastly when I asked how Jesus could possibly give any more of Himself, in His final act of love unto folly, He gave me His very mother herself, from the cross, “Woman, behold your son, son, behold your mother”[37] and in this holy exchange St. John stood for all of humanity according to the Church Fathers. She, “the woman clothed with the son and a crown of 12 stars”[38] in Revelation who battles the red dragon or Satan[39] and who is prophesied from the very beginning in Genesis to crush the head of the ancient serpent Satan, himself, with her most vulnerable heel[40], meaning her children devoted to her Immaculate heart.

Thus, from this moment on from the cross, Mary’s role of spiritual motherhood began where it is her role to beget Christ in us spiritually. What does a mother do? She leads us to all things that are good. What does Mary as our mother do? She leads us to the greatest good, to Jesus Christ, her son and Lord, and ours as well. Through begetting Christ in her children spiritually, Satan will truly be defeated by Mary’s most fragile heel – me, and Satan’s pride will in the end be all the more humbled, by being defeated not directly by God Himself, but indirectly through His mother and her little heel.

Early in my conversion I read about Saint Francisco, one of the children visionaries at Fatima, who was a holy kid at the time, and when asked if he would go to Heaven, Mary said yes, but He must say many, many rosaries first. This doesn’t mean that even holy people can’t get to Heaven. What it means is that even great sinners can get to Heaven via Mary and that even holy individuals still need her. What I learned is that Mary and her rosary are our sanctification. That Mary doesn’t get in the way as Satan tries to make it seem. She is the way. She is God’s battle plan against Satan. She’s not optional, rather she’s the Nuclear option, chosen by God Himself, to be ignored at my, and humanity’s peril.

Mary has said that the rosary “will cause virtue and good works to flourish. It will obtain for souls the abundant mercy of God. It will draw the hearts of men from the love of the world and its vanities. It will lift them to desire eternal things”. Oh, Mary said, “if only souls would sanctify themselves by such means”[41]!

Mary led me to a book about her role called True Devotion to Mary by St. Louis DeMonfort and above all what St. Louis described as a short cut or the most secure way to God through consecrating one’s self to Mary as Her slave of love. (And I’m all about shortcuts and doing things the easiest way, working smarter and not harder, especially regarding eternal life). St. John Paul the II made this consecration, the reason for His great sanctity, who said that all Christians should make this consecration by the time they are adults. Mary led me to give my life to God through her in the greatest way possible through this consecration.

After making it Mary gifted me with her presence for weeks. Her love is simply so overwhelming that I cannot describe it except to say that I was living in the depths of Her Immaculate heart, which was truly a foretaste of Heaven. Her love is a fire. Her heart is a conduit for paradise itself, for she and her Son’s hearts are one. She is like an oasis in the desert, like the utmost calm amidst a raging storm, like a Noah’s ark for our tempestuous times upon which God wants everyone to climb aboard through this consecration. Today it is most certain that he who finds Mary, finds eternal life.

Through this consecration, which I renew daily, I allowed Mary to exercise Her motherly function in the strongest way possible. There where Mary enters in, I discovered, sin goes out. There where Mary is allowed to stay, divine light and grace are always present through She who is all pure and Immaculately conceived. “Oh Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee”[42]. God wants everyone to make this consecration for I found that there is nothing that Satan fears more than an army of God’s children that are consecrated to our Lady, still more an army of men who can influence their families as their spiritual heads in the greatest way through the power that this gives to Mary over our lives. It’s so easy, a child can make it. All you need is the book, True Devotion to Mary or the book 33 Days to Morning Glory which chews up the consecration and the writings from St. Louis De Monfort and others regarding consecration to Mary..

Lastly, I just wanted to mention how important wearing the miraculous medal was in my conversion. It represents the extraordinary graces received from God through Mary’s hands and the tremendous graces lost by not asking them through Our Lady. She promised extraordinary graces to those who wear it. Same with the scapular, where Mary has promised Eternal Life to those who wear it and if you need to go to Purgatory she will deliver you on the first Saturday of the month after death. It will probably be my luck that I will die on a first Sunday of the month! Mary has said that the scapular is her garment, whoever is clothed in it is always thinking of her, and she in turn will forever be thinking of them, helping them to secure eternal life. I never take these two sacramentals off. When I wear them it’s like Mary is hugging me and surrounding me with her love and heavenly protection and graces as she has been given all of God’s power to defeat Satan, most especially in our world today.

In closing, I could never thank God enough for giving me His Blessed Mother as my true mother, for it is her love which saved me. And if anyone feels themselves to be far from God, there is no worries, for to be the least with the Queen of Heaven I’ve found, is to be the greatest, because of Mary’s immense love which flies to sinners like me. Our faith, and Mary, is so real, and all we have to do is reach out to her and she will move you over time to where deep down you know you need to be, her role as our spiritual mother. And we can always get to another level. And we won’t be fulfilled unless we are striving to love God more. She doesn’t challenge or judge you. She just gently moves you over time through her love once you commit to her rosary and scapular and what has just been mentioned. Just take one small step towards God is all that it takes I’ve found, and there is nothing small when it comes to God and most especially, our Lady.

If you believe Jesus and Mary can change you, then they will. If you allow them to take you over, to lead you further, you will never be able to thank God enough. All we have to do is try with Mary our mother’s help, and She will do the rest. Above all she will lead you to love her son the most in the Eucharist and in the sacraments and to the life of grace through prayer and eternal life.

Now I’ll close with a final quote summarizing my conversion from St. Louis De Monfort: “The more the Holy Spirit finds Mary, His dear and inseparable spouse, in any soul, the more active and mighty he becomes in producing Jesus Christ in that soul, and that soul in Jesus Christ”[43].

[1]Our Lady of Medjugorje. [2] Confessions, St. Augustine, Book 1.1.1, parenthesis is mine. [3] Thoughts of the Cure D”ars, compiled and arranged by W.M.B, TAN, 1984 [4] The Faith Explained, Leo J. Trese, Scepter, 2012. [5] Message from Our Lady of Fatima to Saint Jacinta Marto,1920. [6] I Cor 2:9. [7] The Faith Explained, Leo J. Trese, Scepter, 2012, pgs 265-270. [8] Jn 6:68-69.

[9] Abortifacient Brief: The Birth Control Pill, Brian Clowes, Ph.D., Human Life International, April 13, 2017. https://www.hli.org/resources/abortifacient-brief-birth-control-pill/ [10] Gen 38:9-10. [11] Matt 5:13-20. [12] Ps 127:3-5. [13] Matt 13:33. [14] Natural Family Planning International: http://www.nfpandmore.org/ [15] Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI, 1968. [16] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070221065200.htm [17] https://chastity.com/qa/why-do-nfp-couples-have-such-low-divorce-rates/ [18] Catechism of the Catholic Church, #2368-2371. [19] Matt 10;38-39; Jn 12:24-25. [20] Matt 19;14. [21] Matt 26:40-46, parenthesis is mine. [22] Jn 15:5; Phil 4:13. [23] Isaiah 55:8-9. [24] The Imitation of Christ, Thomas a Kempis, TAN, 1989. [25] The Secret of the Rosary, St. Louis De Monfort, 1995, Monfort Publications, p55. [26] Matt 13:45-46;Matt 6:19-21. [27] Jn 6:51. [28] 1 Cor 11: [29] Scott Hahn [30] Rom 5:8. [31] The Faith Explained, Leo J Trese, 2012, Scepter, p439, parentheses are mine. [32] Rom 3:23 [33] Prov 24:16. [34] Jn 20:23. [35] Thoughts of The Cure Dars, compiled and arranged by W.M.B.,TAN, 1984 [36] Lk 7:47. [37] Jn 19:26-27. [38] Rev 12:1. [39] Rev 12:3-6. [40] Gen 3:15. [41] The 15 promises of Mary to those who pray the Rosary given by her to St. Dominic and Bl. Alan. [42] Revelations of Mary to St. Catherine Laboure and the words Mary had her put on the miraculous medal.

[43] True Devotion to Mary, St. Louis De Monfort, 1985, TAN, p.XXV.