Ready or not, here it comes

I was watching EWTN the other day and there was a statement made that the time we are living in has the most Christian persecution than any other time in history.

That made me think:

Am I ready to be persecuted? Am I not already being persecuted? The ways may be subtle, but yes, I am already being persecuted for my faith. I think all Catholic Christians worth their salt are being persecuted.

It is nice that there is a small, but swelling movement in the church where people are being encouraged to be more proud and open about our faith: saying grace in restaurants, speaking up when others use Jesus' name in vain, telling people we will not do certain activities on Sundays, and in increasing our family prayer time, and more. Even priests are getting a little more bold and that is nice to see too because that encourages the rest of us, after all, they are our leaders and models. If they are proud and open about their faith it will trickle down to us.

There is more persecution coming .... more struggles and challenges to our faith. More people will be coming forward and try to squash us.

And again I ask myself....are we ready? Are we ready for even more persecution? My feeling is that we must really be "prayed up" for the future because it is coming, and in ever more not so subtle ways.

How can we become ready if we are not now ready? Here are my thoughts and ideas. You can do with them what you will:

1. Beef up your time in prayer.
2. Go to Mass more often.
3. Do more spiritual reading.
4. Hang out with people and talk about your faith.
5. Read the Bible daily and pray with it (Ignatian style works well).
6. Go to Reconciliation more often.
7. Wear blessed objects or keep them in your pocket.
8. Pray the rosary.
9. Watch EWTN - lots of great information there.
10.Stick up for our faith when it is being bashed.
11.Get more silence in your life so you can think about what is important.
12.Ask for the saints' intercession.
13.Pray outside of Mass in small prayer and faith sharing groups.
14.Attend Catholic events in your diocese - missions, talks, conferences, trainings.
15.Simplyfy your life.
16.Make contacts with others to build a network of support in your community, parish, diocese.
17.Pray the chaplet of divine mercy.
18.Seek to be a saint and try harder every day to be who you are called to be.
19.Think about creating a plan of how you will respond when your faith is attacked or you are put down because of your faith. Work it out in your mind so when it happens you will be ready to respond.
20.Fast.

These are my thoughts tonight. Please think about them.