Forgiveness, Angels, and Fasting

Various requests or email conversations have popped up lately which prompt me to offer a variety of links to items of interest:

Forgiveness

The key quote from St. Augustine (my first saint friend) that made me look at forgiveness as something I could actually desire for someone I disliked. I can't ever thank him enough for sharing his thoughts on the subject. Read it here.

Angels

Shylock asks for more about my connection to my guardian angel. Hey, y'all, he asked! So....

• Here is a link to some basic facts about angels
• Here is something about my awareness of my guardian angel
• Here is where I tell about the time I think that I met my guardian angel
• Finally, this is the link to the angel label on the blog so you can look through lots of other great stories and links.
  

Fasting

Patina who will be joining the Church at Easter (welcome Patina!) asks, "But I don't understand fasting for an end to abortion, or fasting for any other reason...any chance you could point me in the right direction?"

The main idea is that of joining our sufferings to the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. You can offer up involuntary suffering, such as illness, or purposefully embrace suffering in acts of penance, such as fasting. And believe me ... I suffer.

Here are a couple of good links:

• Intro to Lent II: Fasting by Mike Aquilina. This is a wonderful overall piece about fasting and I reread it every so often to bolster my own determination.
  
  
• Salvifici Doloris encyclical (on the Christian meaning of human suffering) by Pope John Paul II. Lest you quail at the idea of reading an encyclical, though I have found them to usually be easy to read depending on the subject, here is the key point:

  In the Cross of Christ not only is the Redemption accomplished through suffering, but also human suffering itself has been redeemed...Every man has his own share in the Redemption. Each one is also called to share in that suffering through which the Redemption was accomplished...In bringing about the Redemption through suffering, Christ has also raised human suffering to the level of the Redemption. Thus each man, in his suffering, can also become a sharer in the redemptive suffering of Christ...The sufferings of Christ created the good of the world's redemption. This good in itself is inexhaustible and infinite. No man can add anything to it. But at the same time, in the mystery of the Church as his Body, Christ has in a sense opened his own redemptive suffering to all human suffering (Salvifici Doloris 19; 24).