Family: God's Greatest Natural Gift

The Spirit distinctly says that in later times some will turn away from the faith and will heed deceitful spirits and things taught by demons through plausible liars--men with seared consciences who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods which God created to be received with thanksgiving by believers who know the truth. Everything God created is good; nothing is to be rejected when it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by God's word and by prayer. (I Timothy 4:1-5)

I have decided to put this passage on Humble Heroes; I was very impressed by it, and its message is for all times, especially today. Why? Against the Gnostics, the Docetists, the Manicheans, etc., it affirms the goodness of material creation. Nothing God created is bad; however, we have sin because of bad use of the will by using good things in a way that is forbidden, in a way that goes against their nature--and ours. And part of that creation, which is good, is marriage and children. Marriage and child-bearing was condemned by those heretics of times gone by (mentioned above), but St Paul and the Church through the centuries defended marriage and child-bearing. And today we have the same heresies against the goodness of God's creation only they go by different names. Widespread practice of contraception and abortion, with the approval of civil law, attacks marriage, family, and children. And shame on that movement to do what is impossible because it is against nature: redefine marriage. No wonder Pope Saint John Paul II wrote The Theology of the Body

and taught and did so much in support of the family, which Satan and the Culture of Death have sought to destroy. Dark times are upon us, but in the end Satan and his minions will--in the words of Christ our Lord and Savior--"fall from the sky like lightning." Jesus and Mary will crush the head of Satan and his minions.

Our Holy Brother Francis speaks:

It was through his archangel, Saint Gabriel, that the Father above made known to the holy and glorious Virgin Mary that the worthy, holy, and glorious Word of the Father would come from heaven and take from her womb the real flesh of our human frailty. Though He was wealthy beyond reckoning, he still willingly chose to be poor with His Blessed Mother. ... The Father willed that His blessed and glorious Son, whom He gave to us and who was born for us, should through His own blood offer Himself as a sacrificial victim on the altar of the Cross. This was to be done not for himself through whom all things were made, but for our sins. It was intended to leave us an example of how to follow in His footsteps.

-From a letter written to all the faithful by Saint Francis of Assisi.