Bringing Light Into a World of Darkness
Jesus is the Bridge to Heaven The Catholic Teachings On The Angels Rededication of America To God Atheism is a Mathematical Impossibility
THOUGHT FOR TODAY
June 25, 2026, Annual Message to Mirjana, Our Lady of Medjugorje
Dear children, May this time be for you a time of prayer and fasting.
Return, little children, in love to God Who is your peace. I am with you,
little children, and I love you with my motherly tenderness. Thank you
for having responded to my call.”
By: Richard Pickard
Blessings to All:
Blessings to All:
In all the world, you will never find anyone who loves you more than Jesus Christ.
Before you were born, He knew you. Before you ever spoke His name, He loved you.
And when humanity was separated from God by sin, Jesus willingly stretched out His
arms on the Cross to become the bridge between a fallen world and the Kingdom of
Heaven.
Many people spend their lives chasing money, power, pleasure, pride, or the approval
of others. They fill their days pursuing temporary things while giving little thought to
their eternal soul. Yet none of these things can satisfy the deepest longing of the
human heart. Wealth fades. Pleasure passes. Power vanishes. But eternity remains.
The image above reveals a profound truth: Jesus gave His life for you.
He saw every sin, every failure, every moment of weakness, and He still chose the
Cross. He endured suffering, humiliation, and death because of His immeasurable love
for you. His sacrifice was not merely for the world in general—it was for you
personally.
Even now, His Divine Mercy reaches out to you. He is not seeking to condemn you but
to save you. He calls to those who have wandered far from Him. He searches for the
lost, the broken, the wounded, and the sinner. No matter how far you have fallen, His
mercy is greater than your sins if you will turn to Him with a repentant heart.
Today, while you still have breath in your lungs, you have a choice.
You can continue down the path of sin, trusting in yourself and the fleeting promises
of this world. Or you can turn to Jesus Christ, confess your sins, and ask Him to
forgive you, guide you, and transform your life.
One path leads away from God into eternal separation and darkness.
The other leads to forgiveness, peace, mercy, and everlasting life in Heaven.
Jesus has already done everything necessary to build the bridge. The Cross stands
before you as the greatest expression of love the world has ever known.
The question is not whether Jesus loves you.
The question is whether you will come to Him.
“Come to Me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” — Matthew
11:28
Do not wait for tomorrow. Come to Christ today.
The Catholic Teachings On The Angels
Angels have a very big role in the Bible and in our history. Angels are a Dogma of
Catholic Faith; you cannot be a Catholic if you do not believe in the existence of
angels. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church states in Paragraph 328:
The existence of the spiritual, non-corporeal beings that Sacred Scripture usually calls
“angels” is a truth of faith. The witness of Scripture is as clear as the unanimity of
Tradition.
For Jews, it is impossible to not believe in the literal beings known as the angels
because the Old Testament makes numerous references to them. For them then it is
an article of faith that cannot be ignored if you want to be a sincere and devout Jew.
The same especially is true of Christians. In addition to what is given to us in the Old
Testament, almost every book of the New Testament shows us that the angels are a
real and active force in our lives. And since the life of Jesus as man and His eternal
existence as God in the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity consists of numerous
encounters with the angels, you cannot believe in Jesus as Christ if you do not also
believe in angels.
So, what are angels? The Catechism of the Catholic Church states in Paragraphs 329-330:
329 St. Augustine says: “‘Angel’ is the name of their office, not of their nature. If you
seek the name of their nature, it is ‘spirit’; if you seek the name of their office, it is
‘angel’: from what they are, ‘spirit’, from what they do, ‘angel.'” With their whole
beings the angels are servants and messengers of God. Because they “always behold
the face of my Father who is in heaven” they are the “mighty ones who do his word,
hearkening to the voice of his word”.
330 As purely spiritual creatures angels have intelligence and will: they are personal
and immortal creatures, surpassing in perfection all visible creatures, as the splendor
of their glory bears witness.
Christian doctrine thus teaches that the angels are spiritual beings who were created
by God to serve Him. They can appear in human form and interact with us, but those
bodies are only temporary illusions and pass away when their interaction with certain
humans ends sin. As purely spiritual beings, angels thus do not have DNA and those
bodies may feel tangible but are not part of the angelic nature and thus vanish after
the encounter because they have no use for physical bodies as we do. But as created
beings, they exist within time as we do and do not know the future unless God reveals
it to them.
What is the purpose of the angels? The purpose of all of the angels is to serve God,
praise God, worship God, and pray to God. In the process of serving God, they also
protect us, pray for us, inspire us, encourage us, and guide us during our journey on
Earth. Some early Christian traditions indicate that even after our death, the angels
continue to guide us in our journey to our final place, whether it is to Heaven or to
Hell. It is speculative that those who have to go through the final state of purification
on the way to Heaven known as Purgatory might also have their guardian angels
(Psalm 91:9-12; Matthew 18:1-4,10) with them during their time of purification of
sin.
And yes, everyone has a guardian angel. As Paragraph 336 of the Catechism tells us:
From its beginning until death, human life is surrounded by their watchful care and
intercession. “Beside each believer stands an angel as protector and shepherd leading
him to life.” Already here on earth the Christian life shares by faith in the blessed
company of angels and men united in God.
Our Guardian Angels love us and do everything within God’s Will to protect us from
harm. Sometimes though we reject God’s protection, and by consequence theirs,
when we reject God and we have to deal with the consequences of our sins when we
do not repent.
Angels also pray for us. We see in Isaiah 6:3 and Revelation 4:8 that the angels
continue to sing and pray to God, “Holy, holy, holy.” We also see in Tobit 12:12 and
Revelation 5:8 and 8:3 that along with the Saints who are in Heaven, the angels serve
as intercessors for us in prayer to God. For this reason, Jesus tells us in Matthew
18:10 not to despise or bring harm to children, “for I tell you that in heaven their
angels always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven.”
How many angels did God create? According to Daniel 7:10, there are so many of
them that the angels cannot be counted by human standards but they and God know
how many of them there are. And yet, as Saint Thomas Aquinas teaches, each angel
is unique and no two angels are the same. Every angel is as distinct from one another
as a dog is to a cat.
Are there female angels? No, and technically there are not any male either. Since they
are spirits and do not have bodies, they do not have a gender and thus they cannot
be male or female. For the same reason, technically God the Father and God the Holy
Spirit are also not male. Jesus is an exception because He became both 100% God
and 100% man when He was conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary (John 1:1-
3,14; Colossians 2:9).
All angelic beings have a purpose and perform different functions. According to
theological traditions inspired from what the Bible makes reference to in various
passages, there are nine choirs of angels organized in a heavenly hierarchy:
Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominions, Powers, Virtues Principalities, Archangels,
and Angels. The Seraphim, Cherubim, and Thrones mediate upon the Person,
Wisdom, and Judgment of God. The Dominions, Powers, and Virtues govern the forces
of nature and the Universe as a whole. Finally, Principalities are guardians of nations
and cities, Archangels are guardians of special people, and Angels are guardians and
messengers to us all.
And we know the names of the seven archangels who lead the angelic host (Tobit
12:15, Revelation 8:2); three are mentioned in Scripture and four from historical
tradition. They are Saint Michael, Saint Gabriel, Saint Raphael, Uriel, Raguel,
Zerachiel, and Remiel. As of Council of Rome in 745 under the reign of Pope
Saint Zachary, the Catholic Church officially only acknowledges the names of
three of the Archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael because they are the
only ones mentioned by name in the Bible.
Angels are all around us even if we do not see them. For every human being present
in a room, there is at least one angel present, if not more. Their ultimate purpose is to
serve God and by consequence help us. They are guardians of the Universe, warriors
against the forces of darkness, guardians of every human being, ministers of God’s
sacred mysteries, and messengers of God’s Divine Plan.
Reflect upon the following readings from Sacred Scripture and meditate upon the
purpose of the angels and by consequence our service and purpose to God. They are
the perfect examples of love, loyalty, and fortitude.
SCRIPTURE READINGS
Genesis 19:1-17
Psalm 91
Hebrews 1:1-14, 13:1-2
Luke 22:1-7,39-43
talk,” he said.
Rededication Ceremony of America to God May 17, 2026
Catholic Bishop Robert Barron said he will begin his speech by
invoking Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
“We know from the early written versions [that] Lincoln didn’t
have the phrase ‘under God’ when he said that this nation
might have a new birth of freedom. But when he delivered the
speech, he said this nation ‘Under God might have a new birth
of freedom.’ So, what prompted Lincoln, as he was giving the Gettysburg Address, to
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add that phrase?” he said. “You could say, ‘Oh, it’s just a little pious declaration.’ No,
no, no, I think that’s born of a very, very deep and correct intuition, America is a
nation that’s conditioned by these great values, moral values, spiritual values that
come finally from God.”
Bishop Barron stated that one of America’s most foundational ideas — that all men are
created equal — is a novel concept made possible only by Christianity.
“We’re not equal in any way. Look at the classical political philosophers; they would
never affirm the equality of all people. We’re not equal in intelligence or moral virtue
or beauty or courage or anything. We’re radically unequal. So where does this come
from?” he asked. “Why would you go from we’re not equal at all to it’s ‘self-evident
that we’re equal’? And the answer is in that little word, ‘created,’ that ‘all men are
created equal.’ So, despite all our differences, we are all equally children of God and
then endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.”
This second concept of all possessing inalienable rights, Barron stated, is a
uniquely Christian idea imbued in America’s values. “No one in the classical world
believed that. Aristotle didn’t, Plato didn’t. Cicero didn’t, none of them,” he explained.
“Look in societies more recent that don’t believe in God. Go to Soviet Russia, go to
communist China, everyone has rights? No way.”
“Where do they come from?” he said. “Well, Jefferson gives away the game. They’re
endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. Take the creator out of the
equation, rights will go out in a minute. So, Lincoln’s intuition to say that this nation
under God would have a new birth of freedom, God is essential to the very
foundations of American democracy. If you marginalize and privatize religion,
democracy is in danger.”
“It’s a very modern sense of freedom that it means spontaneous choice, I’m free if I
could just do whatever I want,’” he said. “But see, the founding fathers were trained
both biblically and classically; they did not understand freedom that way.”
“Freedom is more like this, it’s an ordering of desire toward the good, so as to make
the achievement of the good first possible and then effortless.”
He pointed to mastering a new language or the piano as examples.
“Think of the way you become a free speaker of a language, not by talking any old
way you want, but rather internalizing the laws of the language. How do you become
a free player with the piano? Not by doing whatever you want, but by internalizing the
structure of music.”
“That’s the kind of freedom we’re talking about,” he said. “It’s the moral freedom to
become the person you’re meant to be, that you can now effortlessly achieve the
good, that this nation under God might have a new birth of freedom.”
Bishop Robert Barron ended his speech at the Rededicate 250 event in Washington,
D.C., by leading the crowd in a prayer that officially rededicated the United States to
God.
“Almighty God, we thank you for the gift of this great nation. Help us to
always remember that our rights, our freedoms, and our equality come not
from the state, but from You.
May we ever be a people who cherish and protect religious liberty, serving as
a beacon of hope and a haven for the persecuted. Guide our leaders, bless
our citizens, and heal our divisions.
We make this prayer in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the
Holy Spirit. Amen.”
Atheism is Based on a Mathematical Impossibility
“DNA shows it takes more faith to be an atheist than to believe in a creator” By David Knott
I often hear people say, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. Well
guess what, it would appear that God has graciously provided extraordinary evidence
for his existence, through our modern scientific understanding of DNA. But before we
get to the evidence itself, it’s important to understand the limitations of evidence. As
an engineering student I had decided that God did not exist, but then my life was
transformed by an encounter with Christ.
That was over 40 years ago and my
relationship with God has been growing ever since. I’m an engineer so facts, evidence
and truth are important to me. But working with psychologists for many years helped
me to see that people can look at the same evidence differently due to the
psychological phenomenon of “Confirmation Bias”.
Confirmation Bias is the tendency of all human beings to freely accept evidence that
supports their existing beliefs, but to challenge and ignore evidence that contradicts
their existing beliefs. You suffer from it, and I suffer from it; the best we can do is be
aware of it and be careful not to dismiss evidence contrary to our beliefs too quickly.
So, evidence, facts and reason are very important, but they have their limitations
because of this human weakness. The Bible is very realistic about this, for example
John 12:37 says:
“Even after Jesus had performed so many signs [miracles] in their presence, they still
would not believe in him.”
In my opinion, very few people have the intellectual rigor or integrity to be completely
objective about evidence, but one person who came close in my view was Antony
Flew. He wrote a book, “There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist
Changed His Mind”. I found it an interesting read. What impressed me about Flew,
was that he seemed to be a person completely committed to following the evidence,
wherever it may go. When the weight of scientific evidence changed, he changed his
mind and the scientific evidence that changed was our understanding of DNA.
John Lennox, Professor of Mathematics at Oxford, has debated many leading atheists,
including Richard Dawkins. He has also written about the scientific evidence for God,
including the evidence that comes from our understanding of DNA. In his book, “God’s
Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?”, he goes into great detail about the biological
machinery, and mathematics, involved in making and reading DNA/RNA. The following
is a series of quotes from his book:
“What lies at the heart of every living thing is not a fire, warm breath, nor a “spark of
life”. It is information, words, instructions…” (Richard Dawkins)
“We now talk quite happily about a living cell as an information processing machine
since that is precisely what it is. This is an exciting intellectual development because it
means that the nature of biological information can be explored using concepts and
results from information theory… the human genome is over 3.5 billion letters long.”
“We remind the reader of Dawkin’s unequivocal conclusion: ‘It is grindingly,
creakingly, crashingly obvious that, if Darwinism were really a theory of chance, it
couldn’t work’. Sir Fred Hoyle and astrophysicist Chandra Wickramasinghe share
Dawkins’ view — on the capabilities of pure chance processes, that is, ‘No matter how
large the environment one considers, life cannot have had a random beginning.
Troops of monkeys thundering away at random on typewriters could not produce the
works of Shakespeare, for the practical reason that the whole observable universe is
not large enough to contain the necessary monkey hordes… The same is true of living
material. The likelihood of the spontaneous formation of life from inanimate matter is
one to a number with 40,000 noughts after it… and if the beginnings of life were not
random, they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence.’”
This is an astounding improbability! To put “a number with 40,000 noughts after it” in
context, it is estimated that the number of atoms in the observable universe is only a
number with 80 noughts after it, a tiny number in comparison. As an engineer, this
says to me that the atheistic worldview is based on a mathematical impossibility.
Don’t ever let an atheist tell you that they don’t believe in miracles, because the
mathematics shows that if they believe that the molecules essential for life arose
through purely naturalistic processes, they do.
If you are an atheist, your confirmation bias may be screaming at you to ignore this
evidence, but I hope you will research it for yourself. If you are an agnostic, has
mathematics given you a good reason to get off the fence?
Here are some mathematical odds to consider if you’re an atheist or agnostic.
The Cosmic "Fine-Tuning" (The Perfection of the Universe)
When people refer to the “perfection” of the universe, they are usually talking about
fine-tuning. Physics is governed by fundamental constants and initial conditions (such
as the strength of gravity, the speed of light, and the ratio of matter to dark energy).
The Improbability: If these constants were altered by even a single part in
1060 power the universe would have either collapsed instantly or expanded too quickly for galaxies and stars to form.
The Mass of the Higgs Boson
Quantum mechanics dictates that the Higgs field gives mass to all elementary particles. The math governing this reveals that the mass of the Higgs boson is heavily prone to quantum corrections that would make it billions of times heavier than it actually is. The mathematical “cancellation” required to keep the Higgs boson light enough to allow stable atoms to exist is considered a near-miraculous fine-tuning precision of 1 part in 1024.
Quantum mechanics dictates that the Higgs field gives mass to all elementary particles. The math governing this reveals that the mass of the Higgs boson is heavily prone to quantum corrections that would make it billions of times heavier than it actually is. The mathematical “cancellation” required to keep the Higgs boson light enough to allow stable atoms to exist is considered a near-miraculous fine-tuning precision of 1 part in 1024.
The Strong Nuclear Force
This is the force that binds protons and neutrons together in atomic nuclei. If it were just 2% stronger, all the hydrogen in the early universe would have been consumed immediately, leaving no water or long-burning stars. If it were 5% weaker, no multi-proton elements could form, eliminating carbon and oxygen entirely.
This is the force that binds protons and neutrons together in atomic nuclei. If it were just 2% stronger, all the hydrogen in the early universe would have been consumed immediately, leaving no water or long-burning stars. If it were 5% weaker, no multi-proton elements could form, eliminating carbon and oxygen entirely.
Human Existence
Geneticists estimate the probability of your specific, individual existence to be roughly 1 in 400 quadrillion. Then there is the Absurdity of Scientist saying NOTHING is the cause of all life.
Geneticists estimate the probability of your specific, individual existence to be roughly 1 in 400 quadrillion. Then there is the Absurdity of Scientist saying NOTHING is the cause of all life.
Nothing is the Father of all Creation Is False & Absurd
The foolishness of highly educated people, stating all things were created from Nothing by their own power of Nothing, have no basis in logic. These people can’t even define Nothing. A Nothing without structure, atoms, movement….Nothing. Those that don’t believe in God as the creator, are simply trying to justify their belief without proof or a reason. Mathematics tells us the opposite. Creation in all forms is balanced on perfection to the nth degree.
The foolishness of highly educated people, stating all things were created from Nothing by their own power of Nothing, have no basis in logic. These people can’t even define Nothing. A Nothing without structure, atoms, movement….Nothing. Those that don’t believe in God as the creator, are simply trying to justify their belief without proof or a reason. Mathematics tells us the opposite. Creation in all forms is balanced on perfection to the nth degree.
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