Bump, so late in the day of January 31st, his feast day. A Saint I'd like to know more about and I remember the dreams of St. John Bosco posted here. Saw this: St. John Bosco's dream and the Fatima solution - Our Lady's Blue Army
Late as well here. Besides his dream and his obvious love for Our Lady, St Don Bosco as you know founded the Salesians. We are so blessed to have the Marian Shrine of the Salesians very near to us. It’s quite a beautiful grounds. But even better, is the gift the Salesian priests have for teaching , speaking and homilies. Very inspirational! Happy Feast Day. (A bit late).
https://thepathlesstaken7.blogspot.com/2022/01/st-john-boscos-dream-of-horned-cat.html January 31, 2022 ST JOHN BOSCO'S DREAM OF THE HORNED CAT It is the feast day of Saint John Bosco, the extraordinary priest of the 1800s who revolutionized education for boys, first in his native Italy and then throughout the world. He died on January 31st, 1888, but over a century later he is still renowned for the prophetic dreams he had. It is part of our spiritual inheritance from John Bosco that the dreams he had concerning the boys in his care may help reveal our souls to ourselves just as they revealed the secrets of salvation to Italian schoolboys. Once John Bosco dreamed he was in the middle of the playground and the boys of the oratory congregated around him. Every boy held a rose, a lily or a violet. Some boys had both a rose and a lily, or some other flower. All of a sudden, this sweet scene was thrown into chaos by the unhappy appearance of an ugly and vicious cat. When Bosco related this dream to his boys, he described the ferocious feline as being, "black as coal...it had horns, eyes as red as live coals, long sharp claws and a disgustingly swollen belly". The cat was a sneaky beast and Bosco saw him slink stealthily towards the boys until he was close enough to claw the flowers from their hands and dash them to the ground. John Bosco fell into panic at the sight of this grasping cat, but the boys remained totally unperturbed and did not mind that the beautiful flowers had been snatched from them. So terrified was John Bosco that he wanted to flee, but just then his guide appeared, the angelic man who came to lead Bosco through his dreams. "Don't run away! Tell your boys to raise their arms up high beyond the beast's reach," his guide commanded Bosco, and Bosco promptly instructed his boys to raise their arms high over the beast's ability to claw their palms. The horned cat did his best to jump up, but his heavy pot belly meant he could not jump high and he fell to the ground. After he had time to reflect, Bosco gave his boys a talk on his dream which entailed revealing that the cat was really the devil. Bosco stressed that the lily is a symbol of the beautiful virtue of purity, "against which the devil wages endless war" and that "Woe to those who keep their flower low! The devil will snatch it from them." There is a need to hold their virtue in a high place, and not treat it carelessly, yet when it came to the practical advice on how to maintain purity and fight the devil, Bosco did not mention sexual sins, which I found surprising. Instead he said that purity is compromised by over-eating, total disregard for fasting, avoidance of responsibility and by wayward indulgence in certain conversations and books. Why, you may ask, did he put such emphasis on habitual gluttony which leads to abhorrence of fasting? Bosco drew his boys attention to the verse from Sacred Scripture, "This kind of devil can be cast out only by prayer and fasting" (Matt. 17.20) Too often purity is seen in terms purely of abstinence from illicit sexual activity, but it bears further reflection that Bosco was told that the devil wages constant war on the virtue of purity, and even if we are to be chaste, there is a need for both prayer and fasting in order to drive out the devil who will otherwise stalked us relentlessly. In our wills, we need to give purity a high place of honor, and see habitual gluttony, even food addiction not just as that which can make us fat or unhealthy in our bodies, but as dangers to the soul because they are the means by which we disqualify ourselves from regular fasting, which combined with prayer is the only way the devil can be driven out of our lives.
I would say the major thing about the devil which really causes fright is his total otherness. In other words he is so totally, totally different from anything we have ever experienced before. So have nothing to relate him to, nothing to compare him with. He is just so...other. So that our senses and understanding, our minds find it very difficult to process what we are viewing. So it is a very,very severe shock to the system. So, so to speak, our hair stands on end. We are saying to ourselves, 'This just isn't true..it can't be! This is impossible!'....and yet there you go, it's right before our very eyes although how we deeply wish it weren't. It reminds me to of people who experience major trauma. The effect being so very deep that can't even experience pain and their bodies are in such deep shock at the sudden impact it can't even react. Like that. A second shock to system is in confronting total evil and hate. Of course in all our lives as adults we will have had some taste of encountering evil and hate but nothing even remotely like this. It is overwhelming. As if our entire world shakes and turns inside out.
I found a really good way to fast is to not to eat meals till evening. Here is my favourite book on fasting of all time. It is written by a Protestant but is quite wonderful. We Catholics seem to have forgotten Fasting whereas Protestants are taken it up in droves.
When I started reading about Medjugorje, all this came out about fasting. And also my friend who is into it too, has gone there at least 3 times. So, if one has even a passing knowledge of the alleged apparition, one has probably heard about this. "When You Fast" (2017) by Andrew LaVallee seems to take this up as well.
This should be published in every church bulletin. I know all of this has been going on forever, but it is a hundred times worse now. So few genuflect, or kneel to say a prayer before Mass.
Yes it should. It is so poignant to me to read the words of Jesus to Sister Josefa Menendez (Way of Divine Love). He tells her He is treated worse than the poorest beggar on the street. Ignored and passed by. He said "Love is not loved." It broke my heart when I read that.
