My blog post from a year ago appeared with the gift of saying a rosary together around mom in her deathbed... she died on the 11th/Gaudete Sunday/3rd Sunday of Advent while tomorrow the 10th will be the second Sunday of Advent this year.
https://familysoulstory.blogspot.com/2016/12/faith-sharedstill-at-worki-lord-your.html
I had just read the words of the "Hail Mary" prayer in the Gospel for The Feast of the Immaculate Conception and now we repeated those words 53 times in the rosary shared as a family with mom between us! How she prayed this prayer throughout her life, and as we traveled with her a few months before he death... we prayed the prayer on the way and on the way back. Her prayer brought us together in such a wonderful way in the last days of her life. We also shared the Chaplet of Divine Mercy around her. I was thrilled when mom introduced her family to it, and they were very interested in this prayer for Mercy said on the rosary!
She evangelized her Faith from her deathbed, without speaking words anymore, yet no doubt she heard and responded with JOY in her heart!
I was overjoyed to see a Hallel Psalm today in mass - Psalm 147! Such beautiful and joyful words of total praise for our God, which is what all are doing when they say our little Sister Hallel's name!
R. Blessed are all who wait for the Lord.
He heals the brokenhearted
and binds up their wounds.
He tells the number of the stars;
he calls each by name.
R. Blessed are all who wait for the Lord.
Great is our LORD and mighty in power:
to his wisdom there is no limit.
The LORD sustains the lowly;
How can we not trust in Jesus? His wisdom has no limit, and as we are told in Isaiah in the first reading today..."with your own eyes you shall see your Teacher,
While from behind, a voice shall sound in your ears:
"This is the way; walk in it,"
when you would turn to the right or to the left." Isaiah 30
Jesus is in control of our lives, and all we need do is trust and humbly accept what comes to us. We have really gotten a huge dose of that in the last weeks with the loss of Nancy's 20 week boy, Max! It has flooded me with my own losses and my years of fertility which were the best and the worst of my life! All I find myself saying over and over is that we sure appreciate the ones that are here with us after the losses, and they keep our hearts, minds and souls gazing towards heaven!
Today one of her daughters and Pat and I will go for a memorial service put on by the funeral home. She was hugely a part of our lives and she is missed. I find consolation praying for her soul and that of her husband, Gerry, together on the first decade of my chaplet of Mercy! How I adore all the wonderful devotions/sacramental we are given to fill our days with prayer and keep our hearts lifted up! "On the day the LORD binds up the wounds of his people,
he will heal the bruises left by his blows." Yes, with the prayers and the Saints each day - today he is St Juan Diego, who witnessed and gave to the America's Our Lady of Guadalupe! Our Lady walks with me every step of the way each new day! Mom Verly has not left me... I still reach to her in prayer and know of her's!
How our 5 love their grandma Ann! She was always there with interest, work and a smile and wanting to catch up on their lives and what they thought about faith/family/Farm!
My husband's openness to LIFE and love of all the little ones comes directly from his mother, who had 10 children and was open and loving without judgment!
Yes, she even went to France to watch Hallel take her first vows with The Community of the Lamb in 2011... she was 92! Quite the amazing lady!
Lord, your ways are mysterious yet so filled with richness and depth! Life would be shallow and dull if all went according to our plans for life to always be good and easy. The cross is embraced/carried and dragged down the narrow path as you ask of us! Through it we find LIFE/LOVE/LIGHT! Jesus, may we carry forth your work as we die to self so that you may see this come to fruition/bear fruit that will last!
"Jesus went around to all the towns and villages,
teaching in their synagogues,
proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom,
and curing every disease and illness.
At the sight of the crowds, his heart was moved with pity for them
because they were troubled and abandoned,
like sheep without a shepherd.
Then he said to his disciples,
"The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few;
so ask the master of the harvest
to send out laborers for his harvest." Matthew 9/the amazing Gospel for today!
That is a tall order, but we long to carry forth most especially in our domestic Church/family! Jesus, we trust in you. Amen and Hallelujah
A precious one of the farm women at Ruth's new home about a year and a half ago in the spring! She was an amazing example for us of Faith/Family/Farm... all that really matters in this passing world! Bless-bless, Barbara Mary Luke
love his humility, which is what Our Lady needs to appear it is quite obvious! Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception appeared to St Bernadette and used this name just when the doctrine had been accepted for the first time and that humble uneducated girl could have never known that name for her! Wow!
In you, "humble and highest of creatures,"
divine grace had the full victory over evil.
You are for us, pilgrims on the paths of the world,
the bright model of evangelical fidelity
and the ever-living pledge of sure hope.
-Pope St. John Paul II, December 08, 2002
“Through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, may the Holy Spirit kindle within us the same ardour experienced by the disciples on the way to Emmaus (cf. Lk 24:13-35) and renew our ‘eucharistic wonder’ through the splendour and beauty radiating from the liturgical rite, the efficacious sign of the infinite beauty of the holy mystery of God.” — Pope Benedict XVI
Photo: Pontifical High Mass offered by Archbishop Guido Pozzo, Secretary of the Ecclesia Dei Commission, on October 23, 2015 at the Church of Santa Maria in Campitelli.
Photo credit: François Pierre-Louis
St. Juan Diego (1474–1548) was a poor and humble peasant of the lowest class of Aztec Indians living in what is today Mexico. His native name was Cuauhtlatoatzin, meaning, "eagle that talks." He was baptized at the age of fifty by a Franciscan missionary priest and received the Christian name of Juan Diego. It was he to whom Our Lady appeared as a pregnant Aztec princess on December 9, 1531—at tha...t time the feast of the Immaculate Conception—on the hill of Tepeyac, in present-day Mexico City, as he was on his way to Mass.
To help Juan Diego prove to the bishop that she had truly appeared, the Virgin Mary miraculously left her image on his tilma. This image is now famously known as Our Lady of Guadalupe. St. Juan Diego's tilma still bears the image of Our Lady (miraculously, as the plant fibers normally disintegrate in 15-20 years) and it hangs in one of the most famous Catholic pilgrimage sites of the world, the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. Juan Diego was canonized in 2002 by Pope St. John Paul II as the first indigenous saint from the Americas. His feast day is December 9th.
To help Juan Diego prove to the bishop that she had truly appeared, the Virgin Mary miraculously left her image on his tilma. This image is now famously known as Our Lady of Guadalupe. St. Juan Diego's tilma still bears the image of Our Lady (miraculously, as the plant fibers normally disintegrate in 15-20 years) and it hangs in one of the most famous Catholic pilgrimage sites of the world, the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. Juan Diego was canonized in 2002 by Pope St. John Paul II as the first indigenous saint from the Americas. His feast day is December 9th.
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