The Pat and Barb Verly family and their 5 children, in laws and grandkids along with many prayer warriors have been drawn together by John's cancer... sharing daily for 8 months started this blog- Family Soul Story - Our faith, family, farm and now our cancer journey called HEALING have colored and deepened our world. WE continue to share and depend on the support of our prayer warrior community, that has lowered us into the Lord's presence for His healing!
Over a week ago already... my dad with John and family at CCC!
Many thoughts and prayers surrounding John this snowy stormy day as he is to begin his job as Activities Director a block from church at an assisted living/memory care facility!
Family rosary at our Christmas Camp has become a new and most wonderful tradition. Our parents were the driving force behind this sharing of prayer as they have and continue to lift up our 140 members in prayer each day!
My parents are not able to be with us now, due to distance and health, but we know of their prayers and the weapon against evil the rosary is! As a priest answered when he was asked if he had a weapon as he was boarding a plane..."Yes! The most powerful and deadly weapon of all... my rosary!"
John, you are in my constant thoughts and prayers for a good fit with this job. Lord and Our Lady, who John loves so much, go forth with him down the narrow path as he carrries/drags his Most Cherished Cross!
4 years ago Maria was here and Pat's mom was alive! She has added 2 more children, which makes flying so expensive and hence we need to travel to see them!
Candle lit for John with his stocking that I had out to return to him now that he is a husband and father in his own home! The Sacred heart and Immaculate hearts are beating for John this day!
Many prayers for safety on the roads and wonderful family time together!
Capturing the cold beauty today - Pat and Paul are caring for the cows and calves as we are to head out about noon.
The Gospel today from Luke about Anna the prophetess spoke to me... I too am advanced in age and spend so much of my waking time in prayer in my inner temple. She is 16 years older than I, and my mom has he beat by 6 years... so I have some catching up to do, yet I can relate to her finding herself on her knees fasting and praying and looking for Jesus with each new day that dawns on her. "I am alive another day and how may I serve and follow my Lord this day?"
Peace on earth... the wind sounds like a freight train out there and even though the snow is heavy and wet... it is blowing.
St John today in the first reading once again is stunningly pure and beautiful and black and white, like the snow blanket over all!!!
Do not love the world or the things of the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, sensual lust, enticement for the eyes, and a pretentious life, is not from the Father but is from the world. Yet the world and its enticement are passing away. But whoever does the will of God remains forever.
I John 2:12-17
The glittering world is distracting and lies to us that we need this or that! Acquiring "things" as we say we cannot be open to family and embracing LIFE/LOVE/LIGHT/the Cross of self-sacrifice and living without a luxurious life style and make due with the basics. After making it through the holiday season with the bombardment of commercials promoting all that glitters... I feel over fed and over done!
My parents nativity in front of the barn is barely visible... the LIGHT of Christ!
A family Christmas from many years ago in Onamia, MN! It looks like dad is leading us in a song!
Jesus, we look for you with each new day and "She never left the temple, but worshiped night and day with fasting and prayer. And coming forward at that very time, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem..." Luke 2 speaks of how we are always keeping our hearts, minds and souls focused on you and longing to join you, Mary and Joseph in heaven forever! May we deny ourselves, die to self, and serve without counting the cost! Jesus, we trust in you. Give all those on the roads safety. Amen and Hallelujah
Light filled and angelic and lifting of my heart to you, O Lord! How I love love love your True Church with each new day - this woman advanced in years prays without ceasing for each of my children and their families, my husband, my Godchildren, my family, Pat's family, and The Church! 10 decades of the rosary will fill our chapel on wheels with prayers for ALL! Hubby has suggested that we share morning prayer, evening prayer, and the rosary on our travels over the next few days! LOVE! Bless-bless, Barb
A beautiful gift for this feast of the Holy Family! A live nativity from 5 years ago with baby Romeo sweetly revealing a sweet gift of LIFE, Jesus, for us with Mary and Simon (Joseph). The loving family unit that they reveal to the world, and where we can go for prayers for our families!
Both Pat and I come from huge families so the prayers are huge for our parents (Pat's both gone, and mine still together at 94 and 90), and our many siblings and their growing family. Pat's family is awaiting the arrival of 3 new little ones and my parents have added many recently including our 3 grandsons within 6 weeks and now 3 more to get them up to 59 great-grands! LIFE is abundant!
Grandson, David, lighting the candles before mass was such a beautiful picture of the LIGHT coming into the world and our families blessed by The Holy Family!
Family is the domestic Church where we share our Faith with JOY! It is where we grow and share the LOVE that we are given by our Lord, Mary and Joseph. The readings today were amazing!
Colossians 3 Brothers and sisters:
Put on, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved,
heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience,
bearing with one another and forgiving one another,
if one has a grievance against another;
as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do.
And over all these put on love,
that is, the bond of perfection.
And let the peace of Christ control your hearts,
the peace into which you were also called in one body.
And be thankful.
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly,
as in all wisdom you teach and admonish one another,
singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs
with gratitude in your hearts to God.
And whatever you do, in word or in deed,
do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus,
giving thanks to God the Father through him.
So much in these amazing Spirit filled words from St Paul today! I had to share it all!!! I loved Father Todd's homily where he numerous times said; "In the Churches wisdom" we have this feast today for families and how we can look to Jesus, Mary and Joseph!
The preparation to share Jesus in Word, Body and Blood! Our delight and to share it with family each week is the best!
Joy is so loving to her baby Jude, and he delights in her!
I loved seeing 2 1/2 year old Joy watching her brother, Dave, putting out the candles after mass.
As we were reading the Gospel today Ruth would smile over at Rose each time they mentioned that the angel directed Joseph in numerous dreams to go here or there, and "Joseph rose" and later,."He rose" and went to Nazareth. So much specialness when you are paying attention to the words and take them personally to heart!
533 The hidden life at Nazareth allows everyone to enter into fellowship with Jesus by the most ordinary events of daily life:
The home of Nazareth is the school where we begin to understand the life of Jesus - the school of the Gospel. First, then, a lesson of silence. May esteem for silence, that admirable and indispensable condition of mind, revive in us. . . A lesson on family life. May Nazareth teach us what family life is, its communion of love, its austere and simple beauty, and its sacred and inviolable character... A lesson of work. Nazareth, home of the "Carpenter's Son", in you I would choose to understand and proclaim the severe and redeeming law of human work. . . To conclude, I want to greet all the workers of the world, holding up to them their great pattern their brother who is God. (Pope Paul VI at Nazareth, January 5, 1964)
534 The finding of Jesus in the temple is the only event that breaks the silence of the Gospels about the hidden years of Jesus (Lk 2: 41-52). Here Jesus lets us catch a glimpse of the mystery of his total consecration to a mission that flows from His divine Sonship: "Did you not know that I must be about my Father's work?" (Lk 2:49) Mary and Joseph did not understand these words, but they accepted them in faith. Mary "kept all these things in her heart" during the years Jesus remained hidden in the silence of an ordinary life.
Holy Family of Nazareth, help us to willingly enter the hidden life of Nazareth, the school of Nazareth, that allows us to enter into
fellowship with Jesus by the most ordinary events of daily life.
Holy Family of Nazareth, pray for us. Amen.
Holy Family of Nazareth, pray for us!
CONSIDER THIS:
Perhaps a 2020 NEW DECADE resolution might include resuming or beginning
the practice of writing/typing JMJ (Jesus, Mary, Joseph) atop
or at the close of your papers (emails) of correspondence.
It symbolically illustrates a worldview,
a mindset that reminds that we follow an example,
a way that is sanctified and greater than ourselves.
+JMJ+
I will adopt this now... a mindset of putting my life in the hands of the Holy Family and a way that is sanctified!
Joy looking up to her big brother, who is showing her how to serve and to make your faith your own by service!
Rose with Jude! He is such a good boy in Church where he has been with his parents every Sunday since he was born! Rose loves to be called Rose Again since she was about 3 and heard her name in mass - in the Creed - "He rose again from the dead..." How we smiled when we went out to celebrate the Easter Vigil and Rose was so excited to tell us that she heard her name during the mass! Now we look at her and smile during the creed.
Now with some shepherds and sheep from our nativity 5 years ago! Look at the sweet face of baby Jesus looking up at his Mother, Mary! So precious!
Such a wonderful way to start our week by worshiping and sharing family together! Our hearts are filled with LOVE, PEACE and JOY! May we carry that peace in our hearts as St Paul speaks to us today of allowing that peace to control our hearts no matter the hurts we receive living closely with our immediate family. He speaks of forgiving each other as we have been forgiven by Jesus with his unconditional love! "Wounded, I will never cease to love.' the motto of Hallel's Community of the Lamb is reminding me that no matter what comes my way and the hurts from those the closest to us... we need to return those hurts with love... "Put on, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved,
heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience,
bearing with one another and forgiving one another,
if one has a grievance against another;
as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do..."
So hard to do, and we need Jesus to accomplish this difficult task and His Spirit dwelling in us allowing us to die to self so that He may live in us and we may be His hands and feet!
Jude's music makers at breakfast at John and Bobbi's after mass...
Thinking of Great-grandma with candy, Pat's mother who left us 3 years ago on Gaudete Sunday... John and Bobbi have her dining table and chairs along with her curio cupboard.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph... may your peace dwell in our hearts in our domestic Church/family so that we may give to them the unconditional LOVE and forgiveness we have been given by you! May we die to self so that your Holy Spirit may live in us and we may serve without counting the cost. Thank you for the beauty and wisdom of The Church in our lives and the JOY we receive with each new day filled with Jesus, Mary, Joseph, Jesus in Word and Sacrament, the Saints and Angels in heaven along with our beloved dead waiting for us and praying for us. Jesus, we trust in you. Amen and Hallelujah
John has a job!! He is an activity director at an assisted living and memory care unit! Thank you, Lord, and prayers going forward are appreciated and needed. Bless-bless, Barb Happy Feast Day The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, & Joseph, “contemplating the Holy Family, enables us to appreciate the gift of family intimacy in a special way, & spurs us to offer human warmth & concrete solidarity in those unfortunately numerous situations which, for various reasons, lack peace, harmony, in a word, lack “family”.JPII
From Nancy today with sleeping George on her shoulder Happy feast of the Holy Family from this family...that is aspiring to be Holy, even though our mass performance today was...rough. #nodonutstoday
John's ongoing journey - now working with elderly and sharing his light!
Danielle Rose - A Mother's Song/ Crucifixion 5th sorrowful mystery of the rosary
Danielle Rose - Holy Family
Go tell it on the mountain by Dolly Parton and family
We sang it as the final hymn today and all the way from Kindergartener Luke on up knew it from the Christmas program this year. Luke and grandma clapped and a few joined us! JOY!
+JMJ+
Feast* of the HOLY FAMILY of
Jesus, Mary and Joseph
*The Sunday between Christmas and New Year's Day.
If both are Sundays, the feast is celebrated on December 30.
May the example of the Holy Family,
with the aid of the Holy Spirit,
guide all families, especially those most troubled,
to be homes of communion and prayer
and to always seek your truth and live in your love.
Through Christ our Lord. Amen
Jesus, Mary and Joseph, pray for us!
World Meeting of Families - Philadelphia 2015
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph had only one life,
one purpose: To glorify the Heavenly Father.
That is what we also must want.
To achieve it,
we have to enter into union with Mary and Joseph,
share their life - family life, the intimate interior life
of which God alone is secret.
What happiness to be called to this life.
Our love will consist in living with Mary and Joseph
on the love of Jesus Eucharistic.”
St. Peter Julian Eymard
"The family has the mission to
guard, reveal and communicate love,
and this is a living reflection of and a real sharing in God’s love for humanity
and the love of Christ the Lord for the Church, His bride.
Every particular task of the family is an expression
and concrete actuation of that fundamental mission.” - St John Paul II
Maria with her two youngest - love to see them as it has been months since we were with them this summer! Most especially Hector, who is now approaching 9 1/2 months and changes every day!
We are planning to go there and get some real hugs, but the weather is making it hard to leave when we want to. Lots of prayers for safety for those out on the icy roads and for us, too!
Walking into the church yesterday for my hour in front of the tabernacle praying for Fr Todd... my heart and soul soared to amazing heights at the sight of Christmas that greeted me! Spending Christmas mass with my dad and brother in the Cities at The Nativity of the Lord church, which was so wonderful, but to see the transformation here in our lovely sanctuary was a delight to me!
Coming down the aisle taking in the LIGHTS aglow in the empty and otherwise dark church... the sun streaming in with the afternoon sun on Jesus on the cross and below is baby Jesus in the manger of this most special nativity from all the years I have been married to my farmer - 41 Christmases shared here with our family.
Silence and peace surrounding me as I lift up Fr Todd for an hour of the office of morning prayer, the office of readings and the rosary. Seven Sisters is a wonderful gift to me and supporting our priests is so important!
The Cross and the manger... both ends of our journey with Jesus!
Today the feast of the Holy Innocents, who were murdered as Herod was trying to get rid of the King, innocent child Jesus. Herod worried about his throne had all the babies 2 and under killed, but Joseph had taken Jesus to Egypt as he was warned in a dream to take him away.
This image takes me to that place of such horrific loss and agonizing pain as they watched their young ones ripped from their arms and killed!
"Blessed are you, Bethlehem in the land of Judah! You suffered the inhumanity of King Herod in the murder of your babes and thereby have become worthy to offer to the Lord a pure host of infants. In full right do we celebrate the heavenly birthday of these children whom the world caused to be born unto an eternally blessed life rather than that from their mothers' womb, for they attained the grace of everlasting life before the enjoyment of the present. The precious death of any martyr deserves high praise because of his heroic confession; the death of these children is precious in the sight of God because of the beatitude they gained so quickly. For already at the beginning of their lives they pass on. The end of the present life is for them the beginning of glory. These then, whom Herod's cruelty tore as sucklings from their mothers' bosom, are justly hailed as "infant martyr flowers"; they were the Church's first blossoms, matured by the frost of persecution during the cold winter of unbelief." ~ St. Augustine
St Augustine's words do not really include those that are in our culture of death ripped from the wombs of their mothers in abortion! But we also feel that they are innocent and can only be taken straight to the heavenly arms of Jesus, Mary and All the Saints! They number over 60 million!!!! How did it come to be accepted and encouraged and promoted to take the lives of human babies up to birth? Dear Lord! I am sick at the thought of all these lives lost to bring so much more LIGHT into the world!
The Simon and David car wash in the shop yesterday... today we are in the midst of a winter storm and currently rain is falling and ice is forming... Our plans to leave for Washington has been postponed until the storm is passed. Feast of the Holy Innocents! Let us all Pray to End Abortion!
The rosary is the key! Yes!!! Mary will protect all LIFE!
Simon; "What happened to car washes?" Your it!!!!
A week ago these lovelies were making us wonderful breakfast at CCC! What a most marvelous time is was for us!
We managed to get two of our boys together and they were so sweet and fun to share their first Cross Christmas Camp with. Hubby has decided that Maria and Joseph and their family will be here next year!
John with Jude and George!!!
The first reading today is continuing with I John from yesterday!
Beloved: This is the message that we have heard from Jesus Christ and proclaim to you: God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say, "We have fellowship with him," while we continue to walk in darkness, we lie and do not act in truth. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, then we have fellowship with one another, and the Blood of his Son Jesus cleanses us from all sin. If we say, "We are without sin," we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we acknowledge our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from every wrongdoing. If we say, "We have not sinned," we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
My children, I am writing this to you so that you may not commit sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous one. He is expiation for our sins, and not for our sins only but for those of the whole world. I John 1:5-2:2
When pondering the horror of the accepted culture of death/darkness this is such a powerful reading and fills us with the strength to persevere against all the attacks that come to us as we stand in the LIGHT and for the Truth!
I think you took that spoon from George, Jude. Cousins share right?
Grandpa had fake plans for a nap with George, but grandma grabbed him and put him in some new clothes and he had the sweetest smile for her. LOVE that big hand!!!
Jesus, we love you and long to be with you forever in heaven with all the Holy Innocents that are praying for our world of sin and darkness! End the horror of abortion! Jesus, we trust in you. Bless-bless, Barb POPE FRANCIS ON THE POWER OF BABY JESUS: "The power of this Child, Son of God and Son of Mary, is the power of love. It is the power which created the heavens and the earth, which gives life to all creation. It is the power which gives new birth, pardons faults, reconciles enemies, and transforms evil into good. It is the power of God." PHOTO CREDIT: REUTERS from VATICAN RADIO FB PAGE.
My nest years were my happy place with the babies in my arms and on my lap! May we be childlike in our prayers and love for Jesus and Mary and the Saints!
