PathToHoliness

On Sunday Pope Francis closed out the Year of Faith that had been proclaimed by Pope Benedict. It is my hope that many, many people viewed this past year as a journey to come in closer contact with God. Here’s an excerpt from his homily.

Today’s solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, the crowning of the liturgical year, also marks the conclusion of the Year of Faith opened by Pope Benedict XVI, to whom our thoughts now turn with affection and gratitude for this gift which he has given us. By this providential initiative, he gave us an opportunity to rediscover the beauty of the journey of faith begun on the day of our Baptism, which made us children of God and brothers and sisters in the Church. A journey which has as its ultimate end our full encounter with God, and throughout which the Holy Spirit purifies us, lifts us up and sanctifies us, so that we may enter into the happiness for which our hearts long.

The organization Christian Foundation for Children and Aging (CFCA) is changing its name officially in January, 2014. The new name is Unbound.

In our ongoing effort to help children, youth and aging people around the world break free from the bonds of poverty, we chose to bring forward a name that better represents the work we do.

Our calling, and yours, is unchanged. Our resolve to connect compassionate people around the world with the people who most need our help has never been stronger.

We’ve been child sponsors through CFCA for many years and will continue to be.

We’ve had our agent working on 2014 health insurance for a couple weeks now. He’s been having a hard time getting good information. I wonder why?

I don’t know about y’all but this ObamaCare thing is the biggest mess I’ve ever seen and I don’t know how they’re going to fix it. I got pretty fed up with it and posted a letter to President Obama on Facebook which I thought I’d share. Hopefully you’ve already let your senators and representatives know how you feel.

Dear Mr. President:

I’m writing to let you know that your ObamaCare isn’t working. Did you know that? Well, of course you did. I’ll bet from your perspective it’s working great. Exactly the way YOU want it to.

When you got into office promising hope & change even a conservative like me “hoped” for the best. Didn’t happen. Except for the change part. I thought our country was embarrassed by Bill Clinton as president but you are now number one in the embarrassment category as far as I’m concerned. I believe your legacy will be as a cheap, arrogant dictator wannabe with the most inept group of administrators ever appointed.

Getting back to ObamaCare. I always reserve full judgement until I have some facts and experience. I’ve got more than I want now. My health insurance company will let me renew my plan on Dec. 31 this year as long as I agree to a 24% increase in premium. This is after moving to Florida a little over a year ago and getting new health insurance then that was about 24% higher than what I had before. They pointed to your law as the reason for that increase. We’re talking thousands of extra dollars in expense in 2014 that will severely impact my company and income. No one subsidizes me and I don’t want someone else’s money http://www.wildstarplatinums.com.

Why should Americans care about this? To start with, it’s happening to millions of people. Many are people like me. I have a small business with my wife. We provide important income not only for our family but also for nine people we pay every month. Your law means we now have to make decisions that might mean not paying one of those people next year. Or paying them all less. Now that’s change! I really can’t believe people are willing to let your government order citizens to buy something they don’t want or need.

I don’t like ObamaCare. I’d like it to be repealed in full. Fat chance of that happening now that the idiots in Congress have allowed it to happen. You lied to the country you swore to serve. Your apology is not only tepid but I do not accept it. I envision you getting out of that studio and laughing at all the people who are willing to believe anything you say. I feel sorry for them. And I feel sorry for you too. You, your family and our country will continue to remain in my prayers though. One thing I never give up on is Hope.

Sincerely,

Chuck Zimmerman

Today at the conclusion of Mass we held a short Immaculate Conception prayer program. This is a program of the Knights of Columbus which includes this traveling icon. Several of us processed to the altar where we placed the icon and then said a prayer.

The Knights of Columbus Immaculate Conception Marian Prayer Program honors the central place the Blessed Virgin Mary holds in the life of our Order and the historic devotion that has been afforded to the Immaculate Conception by the Church in North America. The first cathedral in the New World north of Mexico was named for the Immaculate Conception, and the bishops of the United States named Mary under her title of the Immaculate Conception as the patroness of the nation.

The image used for this prayer program is a reproduction of a painting of Mary as the Immaculate Conception that hangs above the main altar of the Basilica-Cathedral of Notre- Dame de Québec. It was painted in 1925 by Sister Mary of the Eucharist, a Sister of Charity of Québec, to replace the 18th-century painting destroyed during a fire at the cathedral in 1922.

At the bottom of the image it says, “His Holiness Pope Francis cordially imparts his Apostolic Blessing. From the Vatican June 29, 2013.”

This week after getting home from hunting camp I attended noon Mass at the Basilica of St. Michael the Archangel here in Pensacola. I was pleasantly surprised to see our Bishop Gregory Parkes celebrating along with three priests and a deacon! That’s pretty cool.

After Mass they all came outside to shake hands and chat. The Bishop was glad I made it. He is a such an easy person to speak to and I think we’re very blessed to have him here in Florida!

That last post was from a while ago when we were on a work day at our new Georgia hunting lease. Now it’s the season and we’ve been out for a few days of hunting.

We’re the Crystal Pig Hunt Club (CPHC). L-R Gary, Eli, Paul, Joe, Luke, Me.

Our hunt theme this year is the Rustler Hunt. That’s because we got a New Holland Rustler to use and it is a highlight feature of our hunt. This bad boy has gone over creeks, logs, stumps. The Rustler is like Honey Badger. He don’t care!

Our first hunt days saw mixed results. We saw lots of does and two are in the cooler plus one buck. We’ll be back though.

I take a lot of photos when I’m out and about. You can find a set from this year’s hunting experience here: Crystal Pig Hunt Club Rustler Hunt Photo Album

It’s almost time for deer hunting season. I’ll be hunting on a new lease property this year. The Crystal Pig Hunt Club members have been on location several times already getting things prepared. I’ve been deer hunting for more than 21 years now and have unbelievable memories that come more from the time spent with family and friends than the deer we’ve killed!

One recent trip to the new property was pretty much a wash out due to heavy rain. Here are three of my hunt buddies, nephews Luke, Joe and Eli. I’m the little guy in the back in the middle.

I can’t tell you how blessed I am to have the opportunity to hunt with these boys. They have grown into great young men over the years. Joe, the youngest in the middle will be hunting with us for the first time. He is majorly excited.

Thank you Lord for this.

Welcome to the new iBreviary website. My favorite app now has a very robust set of website features that includes being able to put it on your website.

iBreviary for your website:

Do you want to put IBreviary on your website or blog? Do you want to give your visitors the chance to pray on your site? iBreviary can be inserted through a simple window (installation of additional software is not required) within your website.

In this way you offer your visitors the opportunity to pray online and spread the beauty of Catholic Prayer through your website / blog.
You can also use your site for your daily prayer online http://www.wildstarplatinums.com.

The Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral is where Pope Francis served before becoming our new pope. Cindy and I got to visit and attend Mass during a business trip last week for a conference that was held nearby.

We learned that the patroness of Argentina is Our Lady of Luján and found a small statute that we brought back. The Cathedral also houses the remains of General José de San Martín, a famous revolutionary leader.

I am constantly amazed at the opportunities we’ve had to attend Mass all over the world. This is definitely a highlight because of the connection to Pope Francis.

Our journey is toward Heaven in this year of faith. But there are often obstacles. Sin.

Lord let me see myself as I really am.

This is a tough one for a lot of people I have talked with about personal decisions and their impact on other people. I have friends who can’t understand how what they decide to do or think has an impact on other people. Even people on the other side of the world from them. It’s easy to understand that if you steal from someone or damage their property that you’ve had an impact. Or that if you feed a hungry person some food you’ve had an impact. But what about the choices you make when you look at what we’ll just call inappropriate images on the internet? You might wonder how that can hurt someone. But have you thought about the exploitation of the person you might be looking at? If you didn’t look then perhaps there wouldn’t be that exploitation. And let’s face it, the pornography industry exploits people in terrible ways.

So I take from this meditation point from my retreat that I need to keep my thoughts pure as well as make sure I am not actually doing something sinful that others can see.

Hello Path To Holiness fans. Do you listen to satellite radio? I’m taking a poll and interested in your response if you have a couple seconds. I know EWTN is on ch. 130 on Sirius XM. I also have a Pandora account and have stations like Gregorian Chant set up there. Let me know if listen to satellite.

Last Sunday I was returning home from Missouri where I went for business related reasons. After living in Missouri for about 21 years it was interesting to get back to that familiar territory. The photo is St. Francis Borgia in Washington, MO. I have mtgs. near there for two days before heading to Columbia, Jefferson City and Camdenton.

It has been over a year since moving back to my home state of Florida. I like Missouri but love Florida more. Great to be in the sunshine state although it’s not shining right now.

Here’s a back yard meditation garden at Roseaire Retreat. At least that’s what I’m calling it. There are some benches in front of it.

I’m going to try to write a series of posts from notes I took while on retreat last weekend. I’m also tweeting them.

So, to get started, the first note I wrote is, “Ask Jesus what you can do to love and serve him more. Where are you going?” This was something we were asked to do and meditate on at the start of the retreat. The answer to the question would help us form a good resolution to take away with us. So, each time I visited the Blessed Sacrament during the next couple days I asked Jesus what He wanted me to do and how could I love Him more. This doesn’t mean I expected to hear a voice give me clear direction but by the end of the retreat I made a resolution to re-dedicate myself to my daily spiritual practices and follow my plan of life. And to do so without complaining and worrying. Writing this post is an example of how I’m trying to follow up on my resolution. Here’s to hoping I will continue.

I have written before about having a plan of life and I will write some more about it soon. I’m taking a few moments to get a new update here on Path to Holiness while I’m on my annual retreat. This is part of my plan of life.

I’m attending a retreat at Roseaire Retreat which is managed by the Tekesta Study Center in Miami. This annual retreat is needed to charge the spiritual batteries so I can go forward toward the goal of Heaven. We live in a world with a lot of challenges to achieving that goal but it is possible with the help of our Lord Jesus Christ!

I’ll be sharing notes from this retreat as I have time to in coming weeks. Now I need to get back to some serious meditation and examination of my conscience.

One of our Godson’s, Luke Zimmerman, received the sacrament of Confirmation last week. He is the son of my brother who lives in Georgia. We got to go spend a few days there after making it up in time for the Mass. Bishop Zarama of the Atlanta Archdiocese was there and gave the Confirmation class a great homily. Here’s a quote that Chelsea wrote down.

The most important decision you make in life is to be yourself. That is, be the person God made you to be. –Bishop Zarama to my cousin’s Confirmation class