Yes, Nancy has tears at her vows, a chip off the old block as we are both cry happy and sad.
Welcoming their 8th child in February - 3 in heaven and 5th here on earth with them. I had the honor of sharing in their family prayer for the 2 1/2 weeks I was with them when George arrived. The Saints and Mary with her rosary are huge for them each evening before bed.
21
Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
22
Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.
23
For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.
24
Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives
Ephesians 5:22-33
should submit to their husbands in everything.
25
Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her
26
to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word,
27
and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.
28
In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wi
ife loves himself.
29
After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church—
30
for we are members of his body.
31
“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”
32
This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about
Christ and the church.
33
However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
With my dad HOH... he missed that the person reading this reading left out the first part by accident about submission. So we got the full homily on how we are to die to self and love without counting the cost in our marriage as we put Christ first!
Today in the First reading from mass St Paul to the 1st Thessalonians 2:13 St Paul speaks about how we are given our Lord and Savior in The Word!
"And for this reason we too give thanks to God unceasingly,
that, in receiving the word of God from hearing us,
you received it not as the word of men, but as it truly is, the word of God,
which is now at work in you who believe."
St Augustine from his Confessions today in the Readings for his Feast day also speaks so eloquently and powerfully about how Jesus in The Word ministerd to him and brought him to the Truth!
From the Confessions of Saint Augustine, bishop
(Lib. 7, 10, 18; 10, 27: CSEL 33, 157-163, 255)
O eternal truth, true love, and beloved eternity
Urged to reflect upon myself, I entered under your guidance into the inmost depth of my soul. I was able to do so because you were my helper. On entering into myself I saw, as it were with the eye of the soul, what was beyond the eye of the soul, beyond my spirit: your immutable light. It was not the ordinary light perceptible to all flesh, nor was it merely something of greater magnitude but still essentially akin, shining more clearly and diffusing itself everywhere by its intensity. No it was something entirely distinct, something altogether different from all these things: and it did not rest above my mind as oil on the surface of water, nor was it above me as Heaven is above the Earth. This light was above me because it has made me; I was below it because I was created by it. He who has come to know the truth knows this light.
O Eternal truth, true love and beloved eternity. You are my God. To you do I sigh day and night. When I first came to know you, you drew me to yourself so that I might see that there were things for me to see, but that I myself was not yet ready to see them. Meanwhile you overcame the weakness of my vision, sending forth most strongly the beams of your light, and I trembled at once with love and dread. I learned that I was in a region unlike yours and far distant from you, and I thought I heard your voice from on high: “I am the food of grown men; grow then, and you will feed on me. Nor will you change me into yourself like bodily food, but you will be changed into me.”
I sought a way to gain the strength which I needed to enjoy you. But I did not find it until I embraced the mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who is above all, God blessed for ever. He was calling me and saying: I am the way of truth, I am the life. He was offering the food which I lacked the strength to take, the food he had mingled with our flesh. For the Word became flesh, that your wisdom, by which you created all things, might provide milk for us children.
Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.
He is called the Doctor of Grace and this is a good taste of how he became that!
Being here with my mother, who is fading away slowly and Pat's mother died 2 1/2 years ago after 2 years on hospice in which I shared in closely. Not only has these 9 years of marriage have included 8 children for Nancy, but also many changes in our huge families on both sides! The Lord is alwasy with us in all our ups and downs. If it weren't for the pain of the crosses in our lives the good times would not be near as wonderful!
How powerful to have this great Saint of The Church so interwoven and interceding in our family! Every night in their family prayer St Augustine is asked to join them on their journey of Faith and Family! Along with St Anne, St Willian, St Joan of Arc, St Bernadette, St Dominic and St Patrick, St Jospehine Bahkita, St George, St Blaise, St Francis... such a cloud of Saints! Then they end it with the prayer to St Michael the Archangel!
https://familysoulstory.blogspot.com/p/johns-cancer-stories.html
Jesus, how we love you and yearn and hunger for you with each new day! May we die to self so that you may live in us and we may become your hands and feet as we serve without counting the cost! We are filled to overflowing with all the Angels, Saints, Jesus, Mary and her rosary prayer, and Jesus in His Word, Body and Blood coming to us with each new day! Jesus, we trust in you! St Augustine, Pray for us. Amen and Hallelujah
https://familysoulstory.blogspot.com/p/my-most-cherished-cross-patrick-gerard.html
Aug 28 at 9:30 AM
"To fall in love with God is the greatest of all romances;
to seek Him, the greatest adventure;
to find Him, the greatest human achievement." - St Augustine
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