Solitary Soul

  HOW WOULD YOU LIKE YOUR NEW YEAR? Mario D’Couto             Finally, the new year has come and at the very outset, a happy and blessed year ahead to you. While the new year brings with it new opportunities and challenges, the 1 st of January is also the solemnity of Our Lady, Mother of God and while I know I may be one day late, nonetheless I thought this would be a good opportunity to share some thoughts on Our Lady as the Mother of God and how Her example can help us prepare for the year ahead.             Protestants and non-Catholics sometimes can accuse Catholics (which I have personally experienced in my life) saying that all the Marian dogmas and the teachings on Our Lady add up to Mary worship which is clear idolatry, pure and simple some of whom have even compared Her with the Babylonian goddess Ishtar whose worship is described by prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 7:18; 44:55-...

  CRADLE TO THE GRAVE AND BEYOND ….. Mario D’Couto             As Stephen Covey would say, “Begin with the end in mind” , while the season of Christmas is marked with joy, exchange of gifts, visiting friends and family, holidays and all the good stuff, it’s also a time to reflect, a time to reflect the day that Our Blessed Lord came into this world to redeem humankind and while it’s nice to experience the good things about Christmas, it’s important not to loose focus of why Our Blessed Lord came into this world as Man.             To start with, everything that Our Lord said and did ultimately pointed out to the Cross, for the Cross was a symbol of His love and a sign of our redemption. Christ entered into human existence under a form which was not natural to Him as the Son of God. This assuming of a human nature was a humiliation, an emptying, a stripping and a kenos...

  TOWARDS AN UNDERSTANDING OF THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION Mario D’Couto             We have just celebrated the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady and I just thought of taking the opportunity of sharing my thoughts, insights and reflections in regard to it. If you have read my previous blogpost/reflection,  “The Rosary – Getting closer to Jesus through Mary” (if in case you have not read it, here is the link to it,   https://insightsfromacommonman.blogspot.com/2022/10/the-rosary-getting-closer-to-jesus.html ),  I mentioned that for God, there is no past or future. Everything is eternally present to Him including the complete chain of events which will take place is foreseen by Him. It is by the divine will that Our Lady was chosen to fulfil a specific mission entrusted to Her by the Almighty and through this, it is obvious that this mission is a positive act on the part of God from all eternity. Thi...