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Facebook "aborts" images they don't like, such as this one:

Just today this image was posted, and I commented:
"This won't last long here. FB will 'abort' it, how much you want to bet?"

Letter to Granddaughter for St. Valentine's Day

Dearest ♥ Granddaughter Mariyka,

February 14 happens to be Saint Valentine's Day, and I hope some nice fellow(s) shower you with flowers and chocolate! You're a fine young woman and you deserve the very best!

There was a real Valentine. According to a book I have, St. Valentine was a priest in Rome, and a physician (like St. Luke). He was beheaded in Rome on February 14, about the year 269, and was buried on the Flaminian Way (one of the main roads leading out of Rome) where a basilica was put up in his honor in the year 350, about the time Christianity became legal in the Roman Empire.

Remember that before Constantine, it was illegal to be a Christian, just as it was very difficult to be a Christian in Ukraine under the Soviets. So Valentine -- in my mind -- stands for love, for healing, and for being faithful to Christ in spite of difficulties. You have noticed that the Obama administration in Washington is trying to force people to accept a health care system that directly violates some core Catholic teachings; many of the (Latin-Rite) bishops have said they will not go along with it, and at least one has said he will go to jail rather than comply. I don't know what the Ukrainian patriarch and Bishop Richard Stephen have said (I don't have my new issue of Nova Zorya yet), but I bet they also will refuse to comply.

[Nova Zorya, New Star, is the newspaper of the Ukrainian Eparchy of Chicago.]

Jesus did say, "Render to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's" ---
Матей [Matthew] 22: 17-22
"Скажи нам, як тобі здається: Чи дозволено давати кесареві податок, чи ні?"
Ісус же, знаючи їхне лукавство, озвався: "Чого мене спокушаєге, лицеміри?
Покажіть мені гріш податковий." Ті принесли йому динарій.
Він спитав їх: "Чий це і образ і напис?" Відповідають йому: "Кесарів."
Тоді він до них каже: "Віддайте ж кесареве кесареві, а Боже Богові."

--- but Obama wants us to give him what belongs to God. And we must not do that! Please pray for our country and for our Church. I think we're going to be persecuted.

I'm sure you know all about Saints Cyril and Methodius. Their feast day is February 14 in the Latin Rite. And they show the love of God also, by bringing Christ to the Slavic people, and inventing the alphabet the Slavic people still use. But did you know that they invented the Glagolitic alphabet first? Here's a snippet from Wikipedia:
The Glagolitic alphabet was invented during the 9th century by the missionaries St Cyril (827-869 AD) and St Methodius (826-885 AD) in order to translate the Bible and other religious works into the language of the Great Moravia region. They probably modelled Glagolitic on a cursive form of the Greek alphabet, and based their translations on a Slavic dialect of the Thessalonika area, which formed the basis of the literary standard known as Old Church Slavonic. http://www.omniglot.com/writing/glagolitic.htm

Anyway, Dearest Granddaughter, February 14 has many lessons for us from God. Let us always keep our hearts and souls on Him.

Love ♥ and prayers always,
Your Grandpapa

Recent picture of my Granddaughter

This was taken in late November. I'm sure it's a "glamour shot," but in the last five years she has blossomed into a stunning beauty. I hope in a way she never realizes it. I want her to concentrate on keeping her soul beautiful for God. She is a very devout Ukrainian Catholic, and I pray she stays that way all her life.

(By the way, I told her to never stand sideways to a camera. The last thing she, or any young woman, needs, is for guys to be chasing after her body and ignoring the soul within!)

This is one of the last pictures she ever posted on facebook. Shortly after, she quit facebook. I'm sure it's so she can concentrate on her studies; she's in her third year of a very rigorous pre-med curriculum.

Please pray for her!

Icky bleckh yuk

I just read an essay by Fr. Paul Marx titled "The agony of Paul VI."

Forty-three years after Humanae Vitae was issued, we have seen the fruit of ignoring it.

At the end of the essay Fr. Marx said:

"As a British humorist and convert to the Catholic Church (mostly because of HumanaeVitae) observed, once you say that you may morally siphon off procreation from the marital/sexual act, then you are back to the old paganism when contraception, abortifacients, and abortion for failed contraception were rife, all leading to the dying of nations once abortion entered society. And if sexual activity can be allowed for recreation, said Malcolm Muggeridge, then 'any orifice will do.'"
Indeed, as an ancient wise man said, "God always forgives; men sometimes; nature never."

So we have this, not only public but publicly flaunted.

Reminds me of the Frs. Berrigan's statement: "Some property has no right to exist."

Dear Mother --

When my time comes to die, please hold me close, as you did your Son.








Thank you, Abba's Little Girl!