Love - the language of PRAYER

My friend Scott Hahn put this on his sharing today, and it was so perfect as I had just prayed for the intercession of Saint John Paul II from a prayer card that was included in the Columbia magazine put out by the KCs.  Two amazing Saints that shaped my first 25 years of marriage, and there could be no better examples of LOVE without counting the cost or without judging.  How can we even begin to think that we know the mind of God?  That is just a huge wrong... yes, we know right from wrong and strive to follow the example of Christ, and trust in the magisterium of The Church to guide us down the narrow path to Heaven with the unchangeable dogmas and laws.  One of the themes from todays readings from mass read around the world - we cannot put God in a box or even begin to think we know HIM!  "Familiarity can breed illusion.  Let us not imagine we can plumb or manage the mystery of God, even by prayer and penance.  Jesus reminds us in today's Gospel that there are depths to God we cannot fathom but in which we put or trust."  see www.magnificat.com  Oh, Lord, I am so ready to leave the mystery of your Unconditional LOVE in your hands and TRUST!

Yes, this is my world today!  Ruth and her 3 that aren't in school yet are to be stopping in shortly to enjoy (?) the snow.  I guess for a 5 year old boy, with a snowsuit and sled it looks like fun out there!  And we can gain some JOY in sharing it with them.  Little Rose, who will be 2 in a month, loves to get out there too!  I am sure grandpa will be buckling her into the seat of his tractor with him.  "She just sits there and smiles ear to ear at me every time I look at her, and then she falls asleep."  says farmer grandpa Pat about his little Zesty Zita! 

Ruth just got called into work, so the kids will be going home to stay with their other grandma instead.  Little Luke does fine with the grandmas and daddy while mom is working, but it is kind of hard for him to be without his best mommy!
Life is full of sacrifices and even for those little ones in life.  It tears me apart when Ruth has to return to work at 3 months - yes, it is just for a couple days a week and now she has gone to casual so it is only 4 days a month, but that first time away is so sudden and hard.  But little Luke has done amazing and I hear about the work that Ruth does - how difficult and important it is to serve those that are so sick and hampered by horrible addictions.  I am sure that she is an angel of mercy to many, and is doing a work of mercy for those that are in such dire straights.  It allows both grandmas to have special time with our grandkids and we know them so well!  It is delightful to us, and such a gift.  Luke is such an easy baby and delightful... his smiles and love are unconditional and without judging who this new person is... "You look at me and I will smile and smile and smile!"

Little Luke having Grandpa time and Simon time - doing religion homework a couple nights ago while mom and dad were teaching Faith Formation to older kids.  Someday they can have Simon and Mary and all the rest in their classes!  We did that with our kids as they graduated Catholic School and started to have Faith Formation on Wednesday nights... we are in this for the long haul and forsee that Ruth and Paul can do that with their kids too!
Well, I am off to work a Together Encounter Christ retreat for 3 days... So powerful to have this experience during Lent!  TEC has become a very big part of my life since my 3 girls asked me to go 15 years ago!  Each had gone and come home and asked me to go, and finally after #3, Maria, I could no longer say that I was fine with my faith and didn't need to go.  It was amazing for me and taught me the reality of PRAYER!  Prayer is not just something you say you are doing for someone - it is real, and alive, and our communication between our loving and forgiving and mysterious God and our humble selves! 

A special picture from about 7 years ago - Little Simon in the mud puddle in early spring.

 

Pat attended the next retreat after I came home and told him that he had to go!  Pat encountered Jesus more personally and powerfully at that weekend, and he also fell in love with this amazing Catholic weekend... and how it is an amazing tool to evangelize the wonder and glory of Our Holy Catholic Church!  Through our involvement in TEC we have brought prayer solidly-shared together in our marriage.  We discovered The Magnificat - see www.magnificat.com , and share morning prayer and evening prayer plus the Gospel is shared the night before and also in the morning!  We speak our intentions during the prayer and many are lifted up by each of us.  We recognize all those we have shared this experience with as our family, and how they lifted us up in constant prayer through our battle for John's life against brain cancer four and a half years ago!  A week of prayer was set up right when John was going to have to start his whole brain radiation - something we feared as it could cause John to have future dementia-  many signed up to pray around the clock for all 168 hours of the week!  Some hours had one praying and some more - it added up to megawatt prayer power and took the fear out of our lives and allowed to Trust - "Jesus is in control in the midst of the storm, mom."  Hallel to me when we called her in France.

The 5 with baby kitty just about the time Pat and I went to TEC...

John and I will be praying and serving together this weekend, and we need to cling to that Trust as the news at Rochester last time was hard!  No!  The cancer continues to be gone, but there seems to be some darkening and changes that could mean what we had feared - losing some of this brightness.  This news made John, once again, take a look at his life from where God wants him.  He admits that the "call" could still be there to the priesthood or the brotherhood, and really it puts the values of the world in a light of why pursue money or prestige.  John sees classmates married, buying houses, getting good jobs, and it is just not where the Lord seems to be calling him or of interest to him.  Yes, he knows he probably needs to work and make a living, but on the other hand if he wanted to go and check out some religious communities we would be totally supportive.  His life has been altered, yet we continue to see that PRAYER is called for and so needed as we continue to HOPE and TRUST in his future and the protection of his brain!  We need to cling to all that prayer that protected him back during that week of prayer, and know that God is more than we can understand so all we are called to do is humbly pray and Trust in HIM!

Jesus, we trust in YOU!

Jesus, it will be so good to come and fall at your feet for the next 3 days as John and I have the gift of sharing this retreat together as those that pray and serve!  I will always remember John's TEC weekend - his family was much of us there working for him to encounter YOU, O Lord.  He had always complained that he had no faith as it had never been tested.  "I don't know what I believe.  I don't feel anything."  Something happened there, but he was not able or willing to turn to You, our loving and forgiving Jesus.  He was not able to die to self until he was struck with brain cancer about 4 years later after he half-heartedly prayed for Faith...  http://familysoulstory.blogspot.com/p/johns-cancer-stories.html  Here is a page I devoted to that journey called cancer/healing/now where do you want me Lord?  It is so good to have the power of prayer always with us!  I long to communicate with You everyday and in every moment, my Jesus!  I am filled with wonder and awe as I know there is no understanding the mystery of God... except to know that I am small and weak and poor and lowly and need only Jesus and His Bride, The Church to give me all I need with each day and hour and minute of my journey of LIFE/LOVE/LIGHT.  Jesus, I trust in YOU.  Amen and Hallelujah

Bless-bless, Barbara Luke

John's cancer brought this into reality - his sisters all around him in prayer and support!

Prayer for the intercession of Saint John Paul II

"O Blessed Trinity, we thank you

for having graced the Church with

Saint John Paul II and for allowing

the tenderness of your fatherly care,

the glory of the Cross of Christ

and the splendor of the Spirit of love

to shine through him.

Trusting fully in your infinite mercy

and in the maternal intercession of Mary,

he has given us a living image of

Jesus the Good Shepherd.

He has shown us that holiness

is the necessary measure of ordinary

Christian life and is the way of

achieving eternal communion with you.

Grant us, by your intercession,

and according to your will,

the graces we implore,

through Christ our Lord.  Amen."

He will be canonized on April 27th - Divine Mercy Sunday!  We were blessed with relics of him to have on our journey to healing!  He was with us on our journey in a very powerful way!  Soon to be St John Paul II will be very much with me this weekend of Lenten journey called Together Encounter Christ! 

The Church of St John, the Evanglist in Rochester - daily would be spend time there to find the strength to go forward trusting in HIM!

Daily mass fed us!

Michael W Smith - Above All

Today we celebrate the feast of St. Isidore of Seville, whom Pope John Paul II named "patron saint of the Internet" in 1997.

The pope chose St. Isidore because of his prolific output of information. Nicknamed "the schoolmaster of the Middle Ages", Isidore wrote numerous books in the seventh century, including a dictionary, an encyclopedia, and even a comprehensive history of the world.

St. Isidore, pray for us! 

This was posted by Fr Barron - how we need to have a Saint of the internet... St Isidore, we need your purity and goodness to abound!