Today’s readings highlight repentance. In the first reading the prophet Jonah was sent by God to call the people of Nineveh to repentance. Nineveh received this warning from God because they were the chief enemy of Israel. Yet, God wanted to forgive them, and all they had to do was repent. As Jonah walked through the great city, he proclaimed, “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be destroyed”. The people of Nineveh believed God and proclaimed a fast and all of them great and small put on sackcloth. Due to their repentance, God did not destroy their city.
John the Baptist was sent as a messenger proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” But after he was arrested, Jesus appeared saying, “Repent and believe in the Gospel.”
Today, the world needs to repent like never before. There is so much evil and darkness in the world. Over 65 million unborn children have died since Roe vs. Wade in 1973. We thank God for overturning of Roe vs Wade several years ago.
However, in Kansas, due to the failed Value Them Both Amendment, Wichita now has 3 abortion clinics. Out of 12,317 abortions reported to Kansas Department of Health and Environment in 2022, 8,475 are from those residing outside Kansas. However, there was a drop of 5% in Kansans who had abortions.
Since abortion is illegal in Missouri, a clinic worker at Planned Parenthood in Kansas City, Missouri admitted to taking minor girls, without parental consent, out of state (to Kansas) for secret abortions.
According to KMUW News from Kansas City, “Eighty-one out of every 100 patients who go to the Trust Women clinic for an abortion have crossed state lines to get there. An average of 54% are from Texas, 21% are from Oklahoma and 6% are from another state that doesn’t border Kansas, clinic officials say. “Our clinic receives an average of 3,000 to 4,000 phone calls a day,” said Zachary Gaylord, the Wichita clinic’s communications director. “We have capacity for around 40 to 50 appointments per clinic day.”
God was going to destroy the city of Nineveh, but because the people repented he didn’t. During the time of Noah, the people would not give up their sinful behavior and so God destroyed all that sinfulness by causing a great flood. God threatened to destroy the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah due to the sin of sodomy, but they did not repent and God did destroy them.
God’s mercy is contingent. There must be repentance and one must ask for His mercy. How can God forgive, unless it is asked for?
St. Faustina helps us to know that God’s mercy in infinite. She called it an ocean of mercy, unfathomable. She said our sins were like a tiny piece of sand dropped into the ocean of mercy.
Saint Faustina saw an angel coming down from heaven to destroy a city in Poland and no matter how hard she prayed, it had no effect. That is, until she heard these words, “For the sake of His sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and the whole world.” And when she began to pray what we later came to be known as the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, the angel lost its power and did not destroy the city. She prayed for mercy, and it was given to that city. It was later revealed that the reason God was going to destroy that city was due to the killing of the unborn there.
Bernard Nathonson, was an abortionist who performed over 70,000 abortions. He was a Jewish man. When he watched a live abortion on an ultrasound, he repented and then took classes to become Catholic. When he was baptized Catholic at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, all his sins and all the punishment due to his sins were all washed away.
Abby Johnson was a director of Planned Parenthood in Texas. That facility did thousands of abortions. She was a baptized Protestant. She, like Bernard Nathanson, watched an ultrasound of a live abortion, which caused her to come to repentance.
She eventually took classes and joined the Catholic Church. She made her first Confession and then on Divine Mercy Sunday, the Sunday after Easter, when she received Holy Communion, all her sins and the punishment due to her sins were all washed away in the ocean of mercy.
The question for us is, what have you done to end abortion? How much have you prayed for the protection of the unborn? Have you ever donated to a crisis pregnancy center, who could use your donation to help young unwed mother’s during a difficult time in their life.
We are all part of the mystical body of Christ and so when one person sins, it negatively affects the body of Christ. By failing to confess our sins regularly, we bring down the mystical body of Christ. But, when we confess our sins regularly, at least monthly, we help play a role in bringing about God’s kingdom. By practicing our faith, by adoring Jesus in Adoration, by attending Mass and receiving Communion also during the week, we become an army helping the Lord to defeat the devil and his works. Satanists call abortion their sacrament. The more abortions there are, the more the devil causes havoc in the world.
The Virgin Mary appeared in the United States calling us to repentance, otherwise She said there would be great tragedy.
On Oct. 8th, 1859, at Robbinsville, Wisconsin, Our Lady of Good Help appeared to a young girl named Adele Brese. Mary said, ‘I am the Queen of Heaven, who prays for the conversion of sinners, and I wish you to do the same. You received Holy Communion this morning, and that is well. But you must do more. Make a general confession, and offer Communion for the conversion of sinners. If they do not convert and do penance, my Son will be obliged to punish them.” Twelve years later, on the exact day of October 8, 1871, the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States occurred. Approximately 2000 square miles of northern Wisconsin and Michigan, twice the size of Rhode Island, were destroyed by raging infernos. One town, Peshtigo, lost about half of its 2000 inhabitants. Up to 2500 died. It is an officially approved apparition in the United States.
When the 3rd secret of Fatima was revealed in 2000. Sister Lucia had said, “...we saw an Angel with a flaming sword in his left hand; flashing, it gave out flames that looked as though they would set the world on fire; but they died out in contact with the splendor that Our Lady radiated towards him from her right hand. Pointing to the earth with his right hand, the Angel cried out in a loud voice: ‘Penance, Penance, Penance!”
18 years earlier, on May 13th, 1982, one year after Pope St. John Paul II was shot, he gave a homily in Fatima and said, "Repent, and believe in the Gospel!" (Mk 1:15) These are the first words that the messiah addressed to humanity. The message of Fatima is, in its basic nucleus, a call to conversion and repentance, as in the Gospel. This call was uttered at the beginning of the 20th century, and it was thus addressed particularly to this present century. The Lady of the message seems to have read with special insight the signs of our time. The call to repentance is a motherly one. The call to repentance is linked, as always, with a call to prayer. In harmony with the tradition of many centuries, the Lady of the message indicates the Rosary, which can rightly be defined as "Mary's prayer," the prayer in which she feels particularly united with us. She herself prays with us. The Rosary prayer embraces the problems of the Church, of the See of Saint Peter, the problems of the whole world. In it, we also remember sinners, that they may be converted and saved, and the souls in purgatory.”
Monday, Jan. 22nd, the 51st anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, is the National Day of Penance and Prayer for the Legal Protection of the Unborn as decreed by the US Bishops. All Catholics in the United States to pray and do penance for the unborn. We could fast, abstain from meat, do a Holy Hour, pray extra Rosaries. Today, let us heed the call to penance through the approved apparition of the Virgin Mary, who repeats the words of Her Son, “Repent and believe in the Gospel.”
Let us go to confession at least once a month, let us pray the Chaplet of Divine Mercy often imploring God’s mercy to end abortion. We should also especially pray the Rosary daily, cease offending God by living the Gospel and truly believe in it by living our life as a disciple of Jesus, who said, “Come and follow me.”
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