Today I would like to share with you beautiful words of encouragement from a Priest in the Archdiocese of Omaha, Father Walter Nolte, who pastors St. Bernard Catholic Church, serves as Respect Life Apostolate Chaplain, is an Archdiocesan Council of Priests Dean, and is an Archdiocese of Omaha Youth Pilgrimage March for Life Leader, involved in Totus Tuus of the Archdiocese of Omaha, and so much more.
This article has so much to ponder in prayer. I hope you will find it as encouraging as I do and spend many hours in prayer letting these words resonate and become woven in your heart. Let them become the daily pattern of our lives!
Thank you Father Nolte!
Friends,
If there is any encouragement in Christ, any solace in love, any participation in the Spirit, any compassion and mercy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, with the same love, united in heart, thinking one thing…to Christ alone belongs the victory.
We must draw strength from one another by our continually reminding each other that our Savior Jesus Christ has already won the victory over sin and death. We have only to claim it for ourselves and for our nation. Our knees must be the knees that are bent in prayer on behalf of our sinful nation, asking the Father to wash us in the water and blood that flowed from the wounded side of Jesus on the Cross as he gave his last breath to set us free. Our hearts must be the hearts that are pierced so that our nation will again have a heart of flesh and not one of stone. Our minds must be the ones that think of God when others do not, reminding Him of His promise to not leave us as orphans. Our feet must be the feet that stand opposed to sin by keeping watch with Christ as He is strengthened by the Father’s love.
We are indeed the Body of Christ. We are the slippers worn by our Mother Mary as she crushes the head of Evil by her simple and humble obedience. She is our General and we are her foot soldiers. She will use our prayers to slip into the heart of those opposed to God’s will and move them to do what He asks of them. We are the men and women predicted by St. Louis de Monfort, who wrote that God would raise up a holy army in the last days and defeat once and for all the power of the Evil One. We are saints of Our Lady who are called to use the weapons of prayer and abandonment to the protection of the Father as our ammunition against the Enemy because we, like her, know that to Christ alone belongs the victory.
Stay strong my friends and unite your frustration to that of the Lord’s and ask him to hold you and our nation in his loving embrace.
The Lord loves the pure of heart…and [he] defeats the projects of the wicked.
Father Walter Nolte
Archdiocesan Council of Priests Dean 2012-13, www.archomaha.org
Fr. Walter Nolte, Respect Life Apostolate Chaplain www.archomaha.org
Archdiocese of Omaha Youth Pilgrimage to March for Life Leader, www.archomaha.org
