Reflecting on a Plan of Life for 2017

Fr. Robert Hugh Benson

I'm reflecting on my spiritual goals for 2017. After reading a little pamphlet by the famous priest-convert Robert Hugh Benson on The Friendship of Christ, I've decided to focus on the saints and choose a different saint or group of saints to study each month. After all, they are the ones who excelled in the school of friendship with Christ so what better teachers can one have except Christ Himself? And since Christ is the friend who never fails I think I'll also do a daily reading from the Imitation of Christ. I've always loved that little book and actually memorized a bit that I pray after Communion.

But I also want to know Christ's close friends better, more than as the go-to helpers to find lost objects (St. Anthony) or pray for friends with special needs (e.g., St. Gerard Majella for women in childbirth) or for the survival of our bee colonies (St. Ambrose and St. Valentine). I want to get to know at least a few of the saints more intimately especially Mary.

From the Creepy Trivia Files...

Lots of people have been proposing that Obama may be the anti-Christ. Well...I take such prognostications with a grain of salt although the messiah stuff, media worship, world obamamania, obama kids singing to their leader, etc. is pretty creepy.

But now a new bit of trivia enters the picture that must certainly clinch it. On November 5th, election day, the pick three lottery in Obama's state of Illinois was.....guess what....666. Really! You can check it out for yourself. Think the winner will give his lottery windfall to "the one" for redistribution to the masses?

Author Michael O'Brien addresses the question of anti-Christ as well in a letter to his readers.
"What are we to make of a man who has appeared out of semi-obscurity and become, nearly overnight, so very much an idol of the popular imagination? That he intends to become the most effective advocate of murder of the unborn ever seen in America should give us pause. Murder and lies are as old as the lands east of Eden, of course, but when they are charmingly packaged, proposed as reasonable and just policies (with a smile, a resonant voice, and an appealing flash of the eyes), one begins to wonder just what is afoot in the modern age. It brings to mind a passage from the first Act of Shakespeare's Hamlet:

"'That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain...'

"The line is from a scene where prince Hamlet has just encountered the ghost of his father, who informs his son that he was poisoned by his own brother Claudius (the 'smiling, damned villain'), who after murdering him, seized the king's crown and his queen.

"Barack Obama is an image-maker, creating his own myth as he goes along... Our hero. Our visionary. Our Great Friend and spokesman in the forum of the world?"

If you want to read an interesting book about the anti-Christ read Msgr. Robert Hugh Benson's Lord of the World or Michael O'Brien's Fr. Elijah. As for Obama, pray for him and work against all the evil he has planned to advance the murder of the unborn and the expansion of sexual perversion.