Meditation on the Feast of the Holy Family

The Holy Family by Esteban Murillo

I love Friday morning Mass because it's the day the pastor of our little mission church comes to preach and his homilies are always insightful.  This morning, being the Feast of the Holy Family, he preached on personal and family virtues.  His homily began with a hat tip to Thomas Aquinas who in his Summa, after speaking about creation, wrote, not about sin, but about virtue.

Father said most of us work on eliminating sin in our lives which is good, but too often we focus so much on sin that we forget about virtue. And if we do, we are like the man in the parable whose house is swept clean, but then the devil returns with seven more who are worse than himself.

Thought for the Day from St. Francis of Assisi: Hell is for Real!

The world depicts St. Francis as a namby-pamby nature lover, but there's a lot more to the saint than that. He had a deep understanding of the nature of sin and the great danger to souls caught in its grip. In his Canticle of the Creatures he wrote:

Praised be You, my Lord, for our sister bodily death, whom no living man can escape. Woe to those who die in mortal sin, blessed those whom she will find in Your most holy will, for the second death will not harm them.

 Mortal sin kills the grace of God in the souls of His creation. No one who dies in the state of unrepented mortal sin can go to heaven. What is mortal sin and what is necessary to commit one?