About "Repair My Church"

One day St. Francis of Assisi was praying in the dilapidated church of St. Damian. As he knelt before an image of the crucified Christ, he distinctly heard a voice coming from the cross, telling him three times:

"Francis, go and repair my Church, which, as you see, is falling into ruin."

St. Francis initially thought that this was a command to literally repair the Church of St. Damian, to which work he bent all his energies successfully. However, as his understanding developed, he understood that there was another, higher dimension to this command, and that Our Lord was directing him to efforts to repair the Universal Church, then beset with corruption and degraded clerics.

St. Francis went on to found the Order of the Little Brothers (Ordo Fratrum Minorum), commonly called the Franciscans, who played a pivotal part in the reform of the Church in that age (See the Life of St. Francis).

Today, the Church is once again beset with corruption, error, heresy and even apostasy. The wolves are in full cry, and the shepherds, by and large, asleep on their watch. The time demands another effort at Repairing (NOT REFORMING or deforming the Church to conform to passing fashions of thoughts and ideas) like that of St. Benedict of Nursia, Pope St. Gregory or Hildebrand, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Dominic, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Vincent Ferrer, St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. John Bush or Giovanni Melchior Bosco, Pope St. Pius IX or Mastai-Ferreti, Pope St. Pius X or Giuseppe Sarto (son of a Polish father and an Italian mother), etc.

This blog is dedicated to this end. And hopefully, this ministry, of Repairing the Church, will flourish, save souls and Edify the Church.

Dedication

I place this endeavor under the patronage, first of all, of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, and of the Immaculate Heart of Mary our Mother:










And also of the Most Holy Mother of God, especially under invocation of her titles of Our Lady of Victories (Nikopoeia), Our Lady of Portugal, Our Lady of Goa and Our Lady of Liberation (or Nossa Senhora da Livramento, which is my village chapel), St. Agnelo Gustavo de Sousa of Anjuna, St. Jose Vas who Repaired the Church of Ceylon, the Holy Martyrs of Cuncolim, the Holy Martyrs under the persecutions of Shivaji and Shambaji, the Holy Apostles Thomas and Bartholomeo, the Holy Martyrs of Thana, the Holy Orphan-Martyrs of Agashi, St. Goncalo Garcia, St. Francis Xavier, St. Anthony of Padua, St. Christopher, St. George, St. Philomena, St. Ursula, and lastly but not the least, St. Catherine of Alexandria on whose day the illustrious Dom Affonso de Albuquerque liberated Goa from the twin benightments of Mohemmadanism and Indian paganism.

Ad majorem Dei gloriam!


Lúcio Mascarenhas
lucio.mascarenhas at gmail.com