16 Otherwise, if you give thanks with your spirit, how can anyone in the position of an outsider say "Amen" to your thanksgiving when he does not know what you are saying?
17 For you may be giving thanks well enough, but the other person is not being built up.
18 I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you.
19 Nevertheless, in church I would rather speak five words with my mind in order to instruct others, than ten thousand words in a tongue.
1 Corinthians 14:16, ESV

(So sorry TLM idolaters)

In Iran, if they arrest a person whose family was not Christian, especially if their family was even superficially (not in faith) Muslim, they put a lot of pressure on him, saying, "Hey, if you want your punishment to be reduced, go find different people who have just become Christians on the internet or in person, befriend them, and give us their information so we can arrest them!" For example, go and form a house church (a house church means that a group of people gather in a house and pray for Christ), and after you have formed one, expose the people there! In our country, there are people who send free Bibles to people who want them. The government, however, sometimes monitors who got the free Bibles? They tell them that they are Christians. That Christian person also firmly says, "Yes, I believe in Christ! You cannot turn me away from my faith!" But they treat him so harshly and badly that they ask him, "If you want us to punish you less, go and befriend as many people as you can who have just become Christians, and give us their information!" I remember when I was not a Christian, someone made a few channels about Christianity and defending Christianity, now I see that he made a channel criticizing Christianity. Some said that the government had taken him and forced him to sell his Christian friends. I cannot trust any Iranian who says he is a Christian in cyberspace and the Internet in Iran to be friends with him and talk to him. I can only communicate without giving his name, information, or picture.

Reports from Iran

I wish the British government was this based

When a sieve is shaken, the refuse remains;
so a man’s filth remains in his thoughts.

Sirach 27:4

(Never goon)

St. John Vianney and the Protestant

The Cure of Ars once gave a medal to a Protestant who visited him, who exclaimed: "Dear sir, you have given a medal to one who is a heretic, at least I am a heretic from your point of view. But although we are not of the same religion, I hope we shall both one day be in Heaven." The holy priest took the gentleman's hand in his own, and giving him a look which seemed to reach his very soul, answered him, "Alas! my friend, we cannot be together in Heaven, unless we have begun to live so in this world. Death makes no change in that. As the tree falls so shall it lie. Jesus Christ has said, 'He that does not hear the Church, let him be to thee as a heathen and a publican.' And He said again, 'There shall be one fold and one shepherd,' and He made St. Peter the chief shepherd of His flock." Then, in a voice full of sweetness, he added, "My dear friend, there are not two ways of serving Jesus Christ; there is only one good way, and that is to serve Him as He Himself wishes to be served." Saying this, the priest left him. But these words sank deeply into the good man's heart, and led him to renounce the errors in which he had been brought up, and he became a fervent Catholic.

I’m about to make a long post nobody will read (hehe)

Thursday of the 3rd week of Lent

From the treatise On Prayer by Tertullian, priest
The spiritual offering of prayer

Prayer is the offering in spirit that has done away with the sacrifices of old. What good do I receive from the multiplicity of your sacrifices? asks God. I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams, and I do not want the fat of lambs and the blood of bulls and goats. Who has asked for these from your hands?
What God has asked for we learn from the Gospel. The hour will come, he says, when true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. God is a spirit, and so he looks for worshippers who are like himself.
We are true worshippers and true priests. We pray in spirit, and so offer in spirit the sacrifice of prayer. Prayer is an offering that belongs to God and is acceptable to him: it is the offering he has asked for, the offering he planned as his own.
We must dedicate this offering with our whole heart, we must fatten it on faith, tend it by truth, keep it unblemished through innocence and clean through chastity, and crown it with love. We must escort it to the altar of God in a procession of good works to the sound of psalms and hymns. Then it will gain for us all that we ask of God.
Since God asks for prayer offered in spirit and in truth, how can he deny anything to this kind of prayer? How great is the evidence of its power, as we read and hear and believe.
Of old, prayer was able to rescue from fire and beasts and hunger, even before it received its perfection from Christ. How much greater then is the power of Christian prayer. No longer does prayer bring an angel of comfort to the heart of a fiery furnace, or close up the mouths of lions, or transport to the hungry food from the fields. No longer does it remove all sense of pain by the grace it wins for others. But it gives the armour of patience to those who suffer, who feel pain, who are distressed. It strengthens the power of grace, so that faith may know what it is gaining from the Lord, and understand what it is suffering for the name of God.
In the past prayer was able to bring down punishment, rout armies, withhold the blessing of rain. Now, however, the prayer of the just turns aside the whole anger of God, keeps vigil for its enemies, pleads for persecutors. Is it any wonder that it can call down water from heaven when it could obtain fire from heaven as well? Prayer is the one thing that can conquer God. But Christ has willed that it should work no evil, and has given it all power over good.
Its only art is to call back the souls of the dead from the very journey into death, to give strength to the weak, to heal the sick, to exorcise the possessed, to open prison cells, to free the innocent from their chains. Prayer cleanses from sin, drives away temptations, stamps out persecutions, comforts the fainthearted, gives new strength to the courageous, brings travellers safely home, calms the waves, confounds robbers, feeds the poor, overrules the rich, lifts up the fallen, supports those who are falling, sustains those who stand firm.
All the angels pray. Every creature prays. Cattle and wild beasts pray and bend the knee. As they come from their barns and caves they look out to heaven and call out, lifting up their spirit in their own fashion. The birds too rise and lift themselves up to heaven: they open out their wings, instead of hands, in the form of a cross, and give voice to what seems to be a prayer.
What more need be said on the duty of prayer? Even the Lord himself prayed. To him be honour and power for ever and ever. Amen.