Tuesday, December 16, 2014

For in us, too, Christ rests ...

“God looked over the world for an empty heart – a heart that was empty like a flute on which He could pipe a tune ... and the emptiest heart He could find was the heart of a lady.  Since there was no self there, He filled it with His Very Self.” - Caryll Houselander, The Reed of God (1944)
 
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"In Advent Christ rested in Mary still, silent, helpless, utterly dependent. The Creator trusted Himself to His creature. ...This was a foreshadowing of what the Incarnation would mean for us; for in us too, Christ rests as He rested in Mary. 

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From the moment when the Christ life is conceived in us, our life is intended for one thing, the expression of His love, His love for God and for the world. ... We must allow the Christ life to grow in us in rest. Our whole being must fold upon Christ's rest in us, as the earth folds upon the seed."

Caryll Houselander, The Passion of the Infant Christ
(London: Sheed and Ward, 1949)

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Christmas Novena begins TODAY!

Monday, December 15, 2014

Never lose a Communion

“There is nothing so great as the Eucharist.  If God had something more precious, He would have given it to us.” – St John Vianney

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“…try to participate every day in the sacrifice of the Mass.  Remember that Mass is both Christmas and Calvary. … Where you have the Blessed Sacrament, there you have the living God, the Savior, as really as when He was living in Galilee and Judea, as really as when He is now in heaven. 

Never lose a Communion by your own fault.  Communion is more than life, more than all the goods of the world, more than the entire universe.  It is God Himself, it is Jesus.  Can you prefer anything else?  If you love Jesus sincerely, can you willfully lose the grace of His coming within you?  Jesus asks you to love Him with all the energy and the simplicity of your heart.”

Ven Charles de Foucauld (+1916)


Still looking for that ‘perfect’ Christmas gift? 
Invite someone to holy Mass!

Sunday, December 14, 2014

Third Sunday of Advent: Rejoice!

Third Sunday of ADVENT 
Gaudete Sunday
There is a shift from adoring “The Lord Who is to come”,
to worshipping with joy “The Lord Who is now nigh and close at hand”.


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The name GAUDETE derives from the first word of this Sunday’s 
Introit of the Mass from Phil 4:4-5 ... At the heart, it is a command...
Gaudete in Domino semper ~ Rejoice in the Lord always

Rejoice in the Lord always; and again I say, rejoice.  Indeed the Lord is near.

"We cannot be messengers of God's consolation
if we do not experience first the joy
of being consoled and loved by Him....
When we remain in prayerful silence in His presence,
when we meet Him in the Eucharist
or in the sacrament of Reconciliation.
All this consoles us!"

Pope Francis
December 7, 2014, Angelus address

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Saturday, December 13, 2014

Temples of the Holy Spirit

    (Jesus) said, "I am the light of the world.  Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life." - John 8:12
 
 
"Those whose hearts are pure
are temples of the Holy Spirit."
 
St Lucy (Santa Lucia)
In Italian, Lucia means "light"
Virgin, Martyr
Sicily ~ 283-304
Patron of blindness and eye problems
Feast Day - December 13
(Happy Day, Happy Anniversary to
Jeff, Fr Spencer, Sr Marie Vianney and the Johnsons -
13 years in the Church!)
 
 
 Sentenced to be defiled in a brothel, Lucy asserted:
"No one's body is polluted so as to endanger the soul if it has not pleased the mind. If you were to lift my hand to your idol and so make me offer against my will, I would still be guiltless in the sight of the true God, who judges according to the will and knows all things. If now, against my will, you cause me to be polluted, a twofold purity will be gloriously imputed to me. You cannot bend my will to your purpose; whatever you do to my body, that cannot happen to me."

 St Lucia, pray for us!
 
Saint Lucy is one of seven women, aside from the Blessed Virgin Mary, commemorated by name in Eucharistic Prayer I of the Canon of Mass.
 
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Friday, December 12, 2014

No worries!

“Holy and Immaculate Virgin, to you, the honor of our people and caring guardian of our city, we turn with confidence and love. Awaken in us all a renewed desire for holiness: in our word shine forth the splendor of truth, in our works resound the hymn of charity, in our body and in our hearts dwell purity and chastity, in our life may the beauty of the Gospel always be present.”  - Pope Francis, 12/09/13, Basilica of Mary Major, Roma


Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe
Patroness of the Americas
December 12

 

Am I not here, I, who am your Mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not the source of your joy? Are you not in the hollow of my mantle, in the crossing of my arms? Do you need anything more? Let nothing else worry you, disturb you.”

These were the words of Our Lady of Guadalupe to St Juan Diego when she appeared to him in 1531. They are still relevant today as Archbishop (now Cardinal) Burke reminds us in a homily he gave at the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe that he helped establish in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Some insights...

“…our late and most beloved Pope (Saint) John Paul II placed the mission of the Church in America, at the beginning of the Third Christian Millennium, under the protection of the Virgin of Guadalupe and commended her to us as the Star to lead us to Christ and, in Christ, to the conversion of our personal lives and the transformation of our world.” ...
(Cardinal) Burke calls this apparition “the mystery of the Visitation as it was experienced on our continent in 1531. The woman clothed with the sun, bearing the Infant Savior, the Anointed, in her womb, appeared to Saint Juan Diego, from December 9 to 12, 1531, in order that a chapel be built in which she might manifest the all-generous and never-failing merciful love of God for us, incarnate in her womb and alive for us in the Church, above all, in the Sacrament of the Real Presence, the Holy Eucharist.” ...


 “…she has desired to remain with us always, in order that the mystery of the Visitation might be always new for us. She has miraculously left her living image on the tilma or mantle of St Juan Diego. In the magnificent basilica built to her honor, in which the tilma of St Juan Diego is enthroned, the Mother of God continues to visit pilgrims and to announce to them the great mystery of God’s all-loving and never-failing mercy.” ...
“… in 1531, she inspired her sons and daughters to abandon the horror of human sacrifice and to respect the inviolable dignity of every man, both the Native American and the European, so now she inspires us to be tireless disciples of the Gospel of Life, working to end the horror of procured abortion and so-called “mercy-killing,” and to promote the respect for the dignity of every human life from the moment of inception to the moment of natural death.”

  Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of the Americas,
Star of the new evangelization 
and Tireless Champion for life, pray for us!
MUST READ:  Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Conquest of Darkness Warren H Carroll


Download beautiful prayer cards in English and Spanish  
featuring our Lady of Guadalupe as patroness of the Americas
and asking for her intercession for the cause of religious liberty.

"O Mary, bright dawn of the new world, Mother of the living, to you do we entrust the cause of life: Look down, O Mother, upon the vast numbers of babies not allowed to be born, of the poor whose lives are made difficult, of men and women who are victims of brutal violence, of the elderly and the sick killed by indifference or out of misguided mercy. Grant that all who believe in your Son may proclaim the Gospel of life with honesty and love to the people of our time." -St John Paul II