A year ago... baby Evangeline was about 4 months old. She was part of the Valentine's centerpiece along with the pretty bouquet from her father, Joseph, to her mom, daughter #3 Maria.
Evangeline represents LIFE in all its' beauty and wonder, as she is the 7th child for Maria and Joseph... 5th here on earth and 2 in heaven. It is hard to see my own suffering the loss during my childbearing years happening now to my daughters, who are carrying forth the Truth of being open to life and raising LIGHTS!
How I prayed that my daughters would not have to suffer as we did as a family, yet 2 of the 3 have each had 2 losses each, and on Thanksgiving Nancy lost her Maximilian at 20 weeks!
A year ago these two were both 8 and asked grandma to come and take a picture with Mary! Therese and Big Dave are close and will grow up together... they are growing up in families that are modeling that are choosing LIFE! Today Moses sets before the people...
"Today I have set before you
life and prosperity, death and doom.If you obey the commandments of the LORD, your God,
which I enjoin on you today,
loving him, and walking in his ways,
and keeping his commandments, statutes and decrees,
you will live and grow numerous,..."
Yes, the Church asks us to be open to LIFE in our marriages!
I am listening to my parents discuss the programs we have watched over the last few days together... the movie, Marty, and the show, Victoria. Speaking about the tender moments when they experienced genuine humble LOVE!
Breakfast was one of delightful sharing amongst the 3 of us! We reviewed their years in training for the deaconate with the first class in the Archdiocese and how they were receiving many of the liberal and out of line messages that were coming forth at that time. "Your mother attended every class with me and she spoke out for the Truth!" Wow! I am amazed that this former Protestant minister and his wife were able to shine light on the Truth while they were newly Catholic and going through 2 years of seminary in prep for dad becoming a permanent Deacon in The Church! Talk about the Holy Spirit at work! Also the fact that we swam against the tide of all those leaving The Church with the misunderstanding of Vatican II! It makes the conversion of the 13 that much more out of this world!
http://familysoulstory.blogspot.com/p/the-amazing-story-of-13-becoming.html
The chapel at the Cenacle Convent where we 13 took our First Communion on Christmas Eve of 1971!
For me this became a place of very close encounter with Jesus in The Eucharist for the month of January 1973 while I was living behind the enclosure with the sisters and studying religious life/discerning my call to become a religious sister which had led me to naturally and excitedly become Catholic! I would attend mass each morning and watch the retired Monsignor bring us Jesus in His Body and Blood in the sunlit chapel! Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the LIFE! I choose LIFE!
"I have set before you life and death,
the blessing and the curse.
Choose life, then," Moses continues...
It baffles me that so many seem to choose death! How can they be so blind as to not see the taking of life/death to innocent life in the womb? I am hurt to the core and beyond understanding of how the Truth has been trampled and death and darkness and sin have overrun our country! LIFE is a gift to be cherished and protected from conception to natural death!!! There can be no other way to look at it! Choose LIFE!!!!
Then he said to all,
"If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself
and take up his cross daily and follow me.
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it." Luke 9
Just as I shared earlier about the shared suffering/death to self my daughters and I have experienced through our openness to LIFE and having loss as the cross we must suffer... I see that as we share that loss/pain/suffering/cross as a family that the fruit is our deep respect and love for one another and our LOVE for ALL LIFE!!!
Jesus, be with my parents at this time of concern for their health and welfare. Be with all those attending this weekend retreat and may we each encounter you more fully and completely in our lives as we die to self so that you live in us! That is true LIFE - everlasting life dwelling in our inner temple as we look to heaven forever with you! Jesus, we trust in you. Amen
We have been praying this after mass each of the last 3 mornings! So needed!!!
“Jesus Christ himself is the most sublime grace of Lent. It is he himself who appears before us in the admirable simplicity of the Gospel, of its words and its works. He speaks to us with the might of his Gethsemane, of the judgment before Pilate, of the scourging , of the crowning with thorns, of the via crucis, of his crucifixion: with everything that can shake man’s heart.”
– Pope St. John Paul II
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