How glorious to have the 3 grandkids stop in... wearing proudly and excitedly their Holy Redeemer T-shirts, and selling cookie dough for school! Mary will start Kindergarten just a year after Simon, who so wonderfully blazed the trails as the oldest. The scripture on the botton of their shirts - "Put God into everything that you do." Colossians 3: 23 That is my prayer for all of my kids and grandkids, and will bring them eternal happiness! If you put God into everything, and have Him first in your life... all the rest will fall into place.
Mary is so excited to go to the same school that her great grandmother, grandfather, and mother all went to. We always felt, that along with our instruction in the faith in our home, that the Catholic School here in town did a wonderful job... Our kids are better, because of their years there, and their faith was strengthened - helped by the wonderful caring teachers, and the traditions, and masses that have been celebrated by our family with all 5 of them! Thank you, Lord! Now we can dive in with our grandkids!
It was a the grand openning of our rennovated Church this weekend, and it was a thing of glory and beauty! People were amazed, and excited, and we said to each other that this truly shows the love we have for our wonderful and BEAUTIFUL church! You could see people just looking around, and taking it all in!
Because I was working the night shift and Pat was baling... I went to mass alone and ended up sitting about half of the way up... I found my eyes being drawn over to the 10th station - newly painted and beautiful on the backdrop of the column... This station is so close to me - the stripping of His garments - the humility station- and where Susan/Hallel would sit morning after morning for her Holy Hour followed by mass. After she returned from the discernment house in the Cities, where she had lived for a school year discerning her vocation... she returned home in an inner turmoil and wondering what the Lord wanted for her.
I noticed that she would sit by the 10th station, and I asked her why...."It is the last row with kneelers, and I wanted to sit as far back as I could so that others wouldn't notice that I was crying." She claimed nothing to do with humility, but I think that I know different. As a result of these few months of seeing her there... that is the spot where I feel close to her, and returning to our wonderful and beautified Church after being gone for months - brought that closeness back to me, and I rejoiced! I have returned home to the place where our children have been blessed with the sacraments, and endless numbers of masses every week and Holy days, and many hours on their knees in prayer- asking the Lord to guide and direct them, and those prayers have been, and continue to be answered! How I look forward to the mass tonight of Our Lady, and then for our first Adoration back in our beautiful space tomorrow! Many hours - the best Hours of my Life - spent on my knees in Adoration and Suplication!
So much beauty these days inside and out! Life is a gift to be lived with Him and in Him, and always putting Him and His wonderful Mother first in our lives! How does it all balance? Pope Benedict XVI writes that "precisely because Mary is with God and in God, she is very close to each one of us. While she lived on this earth she could only be close to a few people. Being in God, who is actually 'within' all of us, Mary shares in this closeness of God." Our Lady "knows our hearts, can hear our prayers, can help us with her motherly kindness. She always listens to us and being Mother of the Son, participates in the power of the Son and in his goodness. We can always entrust the whole of our lives to this Mother."
"The Blessed Mother's birth into heaven generates in us 'an ever new capacity to await God's future." Blessed John Paul 11
Lord Jesus Christ, along with your amazing Mother and our Mother of heaven and earth... we love you and praise you for the great gift of LIFE, that you have bestowed upon us in this world... A world of beauty, and wonder, and joy... as long as we put you, and your wonderful amazing Church first in our lives! Taking the time to come to you in the sacraments, and in prayer, and adoration! Thank for all the hard work and financial donations that has transformed our wonderful church in Marshall - into a beautiful space... where our thoughts and prayers can be lifted heavenward and always to YOU! We love to see you enshrined in the tabernacle, and the altar from, of old, now made new and beautiful to hold your "Beating Heart." Jesus, we trust in you, and give our entire lives to you! Bring us to your LIFE everlasting! Amen, Hosanna and Halleluia!
Bless-bless, BarbThe mystery of the Assumption
"This is the nucleus of our faith in the Assumption: we believe that Mary, like Christ her Son, overcame death and is already triumphant in heavenly glory, in the totality of her being, "in body and soul"...
The Mother of God is so deeply integrated into Christ's Mystery that at the end of her earthly life she already participates with her whole self in ther Son's Resurrection...
God knows and loves the whole of the human being, what we are. And God welcomes into his eternity what is developing and becoming now, in our life made up of suffering and love, of hope, joy, and sorrow. The whole of man, the whole of his life, is taken by God and, purified in him, receives eternity...
"I think this is a truth that should fill us with deep joy. Christianity does not proclaim merely some salvation of the soul in a vague afterlife in which all that is precious and dear to us in this world will be eliminated, but promises eternal life, ' the life of the world to com.' Nothing that is precious and dear to us will fall into ruin; rather it will find fullness in God. Every hair of our head is counted, Jesus said one day (Mt 10:30)...
In Mary taken up into heaven, who fully shares in the Resurrection of the Son, we contemplate the fulfillment of the human creature in accordance with 'God's world.' "
Pope Benedict XVI see http://www.magnificat.com/
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