Tag: Fasting

From Hub to Heart, via Medjugorje

Posted: by Nancy HC Ward

At the Catholic Men’s Conference in Boston in 2010, Andy LaValle met Jim Caviezel, not knowing he portrayed Jesus in The Passion of Christ. Jim dared Andy to go with him to Medjugorje, an obscure, poor village in Croatia. For more than thirty years, it has been alleged that the Virgin Mary has been appearing there and calling her children to live lives of prayer, penance and fasting.

Andy writes, “At the time, Medjugorje was not on my radar; in fact I could not even spell it or know where it was. . . . I boldly told Jim, ‘Do not get your hopes up. I am not flying 15 hours to say a rosary.’ Today I pray the rosary, not say the rosary.”

Andy wrote his reconversion story, From the Hub to the Heart: My Journey, with Leticia Velasquez. In my favorite chapter, Andy compassionately explains how fasting on bread relates to the Eucharistic bread. This comes from a man who never fasted before making a pilgrimage to Medjugorje in 2010.

Read Andy’s conversion story on JoyAlive.netYour Read More Link Text

Battling the temptations of the flesh

Posted: by Monica @ Catholic Bloggers Network
Allegory of Virtues and Vices

We’ve been delving into temptations coming from the world, the flesh, and the Devil. Last week we discussed demonic temptations in detail. Today, we’ll examine temptations of the flesh and how to combat them.

We saw that people with melancholic or choleric temperaments tend to be more prone to the temptations that come directly from the Devil: pride, envy, and anger. Temptations of the flesh particularly plague the other two temperaments. More specifically, sanguines often struggle with gluttony and sins against chastity. Phlegmatics  struggle with sloth. (I will be writing more about the four classic temperaments throughout this year. I am creating a spiritual growth plan for you to use with your children of each temperament.)

As I have said before, the flesh can be the most relentless of the three sources of temptation. While the Devil may leave us alone for a time, and we can shut out the world to a certain extent, we can never get away from our own flesh. It remains with us every moment until the end of our life, but we can learn to resist it.
 Gluttony, lust, and slothThe Catechism defines concupiscence as “the movement of the sensitive appetite contrary to the operation of the human reason… Concupiscence stems from the disobedience of the first sin. It unsettles man’s moral faculties and, without being in itself an offense, inclines man to commit sins” (2515).

Sanguines are easily moved by what they experience through their exterior senses. Thus, immodest entertainment might lead them into sexual sin. An all-you-can-eat buffet might tempt them towards gluttony. They might start using vulgar and blasphemous language if they listen to the wrong kind of music.

Continue reading at Contemplative Homeschool.