“As long as he who fasts, fasts for God, and he who fasts not, also fasts not for God, devotion is as well satisfied with one as with the other.”
— St. Francis de Sales.
As we go through our daily life, we can lose sight of the fact that we are children of God. When we were baptized into the Body of Christ, we were adopted into God’s family. This is neither an abstract nor an allegorical construct. Through the new covenant established by Christ, we are adopted children of God. As S. Paul writes in this Sunday’s epistle: Be ye followers of God, as dear children…
What a tall order! And yet, our calling as God’s children is to imitate Him. As Our Lord Himself teaches in the Sermon on the Mount: Be ye perfect as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
Our Lenten experience to date should make clear how difficult, if not impossible, it is to follow this precept. Even with the best of intentions, we fail to live up to our calling as children of God.
But in this Sunday’s Epistle, S. Paul counsels us in a way to avoid sin, especially sins of the flesh. But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints. In other words, don’t just avoid these sins, but keep far away from them. In traditional moral theology we refer to this as “avoiding the near occasion of sin.”
While Satan cannot read our minds – only God can – he is a keen observer of our behavior. He notes the sorts of temptations that get our attention and sends them our way with increasing frequency, especially during Lent. This is why we are to refrain from even so much as letting them enter our imaginations.
The Church Fathers used precise language to delineate how we so easily fall into sin. First, they noted, Satan plants the “suggestion” into our minds. Then we take that temptation and entertain it within our imagination. This they called “delectation.” Finally, we act upon the temptation that we have entertained in our imagination, that is, our “consent.” Suggestion comes directly from Satan, delectation from the result of our concupiscence (or fallen nature) and consent through the will. When the will becomes weakened through repeatedly sinning, the greater the chance of forming a sinful habit.
It is all too easy, in our present culture, to be lulled into an amoral stupor. The popular media today is saturated with the antithesis of Biblical morality. I read recently of an up-scale bar in New York City where the large-screen TVs steam explicit pornographic acts. Over time and with increasing exposure, we can find ourselves acquiescing to this debased culture. When we keep God only in our minds and not in our hearts we are the more susceptible to the culture of prime time television and mass media.
During Lent, we are bidden to spend more time in prayer and in fasting. We do so to allow God to make His presence more real within us. By fasting and abstaining from material things, such as food and television, we learn to focus our attention and imagination on that which is of eternal value.As the days lengthen during this season of the year, and more light fills the waking hours, may this inspire us to allow the light of Christ to more greatly illumine us. For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light.
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Below is an article by Don Feder on the insanity of the “trans” movement. There is no such thing as a transsexual. But the movement is very real, and very dangerous. It is a departure from God’s Creation and Word. It is a departure from biology (i.e. science). It is a departure from reality.
Transgenderism: An attack on reality
For the left, facts are meaningless
BY: Don Feder, The Washington Times (March 1, 2026).
Liberalism is based on a denial of reality. John Adams said, “Facts are stubborn things.” For the political left, facts are meaningless and evidence is irrelevant.
Liberals believe that raising taxes will spur productivity, that guns cause crime, that election integrity is racist and that illegal immigration is a human right.
Yet nothing is more quintessentially liberal than support for transgenderism — the dogma that gender can be separated from biology.
When it’s convenient, liberals insist that we follow the science — on climate change, for instance. On “gender identity,” they demand that we ignore the science that says you can’t change your DNA.
In Pawtucket, Rhode Island, last month, Robert Dorgan, who called himself Roberta Esposito and looked like a cross between a lumberjack and a drag queen, went to a hockey game and killed his son, his ex-wife and his ex-wife’s father before taking his own life.
It was the second transgender mass shooting in a week, including the worst school shooting in Canada’s history.
The past three years have also had transgender mass shootings in Nashville, Minneapolis and Colorado Springs. A report by the Crime Prevention Research Center shows that from 2018 to 2024, transgender people committed active shootings at least 12 times their share of the population.
Advocates insist that a man who thinks he is a woman really is a woman, and vice versa, and that all he or she needs is amputation and medication to lead a perfectly abnormal life.
Because the procedure doesn’t deal with underlying psychological problems, but frequently exacerbates them, the victims of “gender-reassignment” surgery often become bitter, depressed and sometimes violent.
They blame others — including family members, co-workers and classmates — for rejecting their new identities.
Slain conservative leader Charlie Kirk observed: “If you are crazy enough to want to hormonally and surgically ‘change your sex,’ you have a mental disorder, and you are too crazy to own a firearm.” How non-affirming can you get?
Ironically, the man — excuse me, the non-lactating person — charged with Kirk’s murder was in a relationship with a guy who thought he was a gal.
Mass shootings aren’t the only consequences of this sanctioned psychosis. Law and social pressure are used to compel people to fall in line.
There’s power in this mind control. Jennifer Roback Morse, president of the Ruth Institute, an organization fighting the sexual revolution, said, “If you can get someone to say (ex-Olympian) Bruce Jenner is a woman, you can get them to say anything.”
Teachers have been punished for using the wrong pronouns. Women have had their health club memberships canceled for objecting to being forced to undress in front of a man.
Males are allowed to compete in women’s sports, despite their obvious physical advantages. Boys can use girls’ bathrooms.
Men are incarcerated in women’s prisons and allowed to stay at women’s shelters, raising the risk of sexual assault. Taxpayers are forced to pay for “gender-affirming” surgery.
We have created a new vocabulary to avoid offending the reality-adverse, including referring to a man as someone with “male-appearing genitalia” and a woman as a “lactating person.” Liberals blithely speak of “the sex assigned at birth.” (“Your sex assignment, should you choose to accept it.”)
Democrats and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson claim they don’t know what a woman is.
Congressional Democrats have a Trans Bill of Rights, which they are prepared to inflict on us if they get a majority in the next elections. It requires “equal access to services and accommodations” for the gender confused.
Liberals love victims. The transgendered are the newest victim group. If you refuse to affirm their fantasies, then you are a bigot who is fomenting hate against them.
The ultimate victims of this madness are the transgender people themselves, many of whom will never get to experience the gifts God gave them.
On Jan. 30, a New York jury awarded $2 million in damages to a 22-year-old woman against a psychologist and a plastic surgeon who pushed her into getting a double mastectomy when she was 16 so her body would match her “identity.”
A date has been set for a similar lawsuit against the Kaiser Foundation Hospitals by detransitioner Chloe Cole. Other litigation is pending. Perhaps this will put an end to the mutilation of minors.
The transgender ideology undermines the family as it attacks the culture. We should be celebrating men and women who marry and have children, not the gender confused who wander in an alternate reality.
GFK
Observations From The Fifth Estate 