Spending days with the Poor Little Sisters/baskets of fragments from our "missions!"

Our parting picture with our nun, Little Sister Hallel after breakfast and sharing the Gospel in the chapel!  Pat will probably not get there to see her due to calving and planting.  She also is restricted in seeing her family during Lent, which begins in a week.  We got down there just in the nick of time!

I am under the weather with a cold and we left Hallel feeling poorly too!  I am dragging today, and had a morning with hubby doing business, so I have way too much to share here after our 2 glorious days of living with Hallel and our Family of the Lamb!  I think often that I should be keeping notes to remind myself of the bread that is miraculously multiplied as these Little Sisters/The poor humbly kneel before their Lord and do as he commands to find Jesus in Word, Bread and Body each day, and also go begging for their food from the Poor!

 Aglow after our deep prayer and allowed to share in The Community LIFE of our daughter!  The morning and evening prayer followed by an hour of Adoration!  Kneeling at His Feet and pouring out my deepest love and longing for Jesus to come close to me and all those that he has given to me on this journey.  How I love to place each member of our huge family... Pat + My family = 200+ including the new life in the womb in the monstrance with Jesus!  So powerful and after a long period of naming all..."Jesus and Mary, I love you, save souls."

 We divided up into 2 groups before breakfast and went around the circle sharing each line of the Gospel... Finally we repeated the entire Gospel, and much was in our hearts as a result of repeating it.
Today's Gospel speaks of the miraculous way that our Lord cares for us if only we do as He asks of us...
Do you not yet understand or comprehend?
Are your hearts hardened?
Do you have eyes and not see, ears and not hear?
And do you not remember,
when I broke the five loaves for the five thousand,
how many wicker baskets full of fragments you picked up?”
They answered him, “Twelve.”
“When I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand,
how many full baskets of fragments did you pick up?”
They answered him, “Seven.”
He said to them, “Do you still not understand?”
Mark 8:14-21

Pat using his mother's spoon to dish cereal for breakfast yesterday.

While we live there with them we have the huge wonderful privilege of their sharing with us the glorious experiences they have while they go out of "mission."  Mission involves them going out by 2s to beg for their food from the poor!  Their founder St Dominic begged for his food, and Little Sister Marie heard the Lord telling her that they should find their roots and beg, but from the poor!  How can this be?  She was led to I Kings 17 - Elijah and the widow - "make some for  me and your flour and oil will never run out."

 So many powerful stories of Jesus answering the prayers of His little Sisters of the Lamb, and the poor that they go knocking on their doors as Jesus coming to them.  They share prayer and Jesus in The Word with them, and they welcome them into their humble dwellings and offer to share a meal with them from the little that they have.

As Jesus reminded the disciples today about how the few loaves feed the thousands and there were 12 and 7 baskets left over!  When they would share about coming up to a home of a family from Burma and how they brought them in and fed them sticky rice and vegetables and then they prayed together in front of her altar in the corner.  "I am Catholic!"  Little Sister Marie John with her French mother visiting her, who has a soft place in her heart for the far East and was deeply touched by their time there.

A beautiful story of The Community of Lyons, France!  Two Little Brothers on their way to mass early in the morning see a body floating by in the river.  One jumps in to bring him to shore, he is still breathing barely, the ambulance comes and they do not have a lot of hope, but the man recovers and shares that he had been drinking and does not remember what happened to him and how he was in the river.  He had no faith in God, but the Brothers visited him and he stopped by to ask for the men in blue that saved his life!

Many prayers for him to find Faith through the generous use of the Little Brothers and Sisters and their lives of giving their ALL to Jesus and when he says take that 7 loaves and allow me to break it to feed the 5,000.  They believe He can and will and I witnessed that there were baskets of fragments left over that overwhelmed me with His generous LOVE to the poor!

 Hands raised in praise and worship of Our Lord!

 Jesus there in his humble wooden monstrance and the deep worship and prayer all around us!

I even was given the powerful experience of going on Mission on Sunday with Hallel, Pat, Marie John, and I... we went to eat lunch with the poor at the Soup Kitchen at the Cathedral in KC, Missouri.  I was nervous to go as I had been there before when The Community was doing entertainment for the poor and homeless while they ate their meal.  I had felt awkward and even a bit scared by what was all around me.

This time to share it with Pat was new.  He and Hallel were a team and my buddy was little Sister Marie John.  We spoke to some of the men that The Sisters have met over their time of coming to the Soup Kitchen quite often.  The Little Sisters are the poor, so they don't come there to serve the poor, but rather to eat with them.  To see the faces light up with recognition and how they share with them their pains and hardships.  Realizing that many are there due to drugs and alcohol and mental illness. You don't see families or any children... mostly men with a few women, and they are very dirty with black hands and dirty hair.  The Little Sisters know many by name and speak to them about how Jesus is waiting for them to come and spend some time with him at church!

Little Sister Olivianna ringing the bell at the beginning of evening prayer so that the entire neighborhood knows that prayer filled with the song of angels and much lifting up to Jesus and Mary is happening in their chapel - Lumen Christi/LIGHT of Christ!

Jed is an amazing young man, who is a postulant with the Little Brothers!  He is blind, which seems to have brought him to such a depth of Faith and embracing The Truth!

It was shared at Open Table when we arrived there at about noon on Saturday that Jed and Little Brother Louis Marie had gone on mission to Jed's hometown and spoke at the schools there.  "Jed so impressed me when he shared with the kids that if you ask the Lord to show you His Plan for you with a sincere heart that He will show you!" said Louis Marie

 
 Visiting and sharing in their lives of prayer and dishes!

 I know how much Hallel appreciates that her busy farmer father can take the time to come 7 hours to see her and now the amazing gift of living their lives with them!  Even allowed to share with them the humble experience of being the poor!

 Jed after mass!

Jed and Louis Marie shared the powerful experience they then had in St Louis eating with the poor in the soup kitchen, and then going to a homeless shelter where Jed used to volunteer to sleep.  "They were full so we had to go to another one in another part of the city, and we did not get much sleep that night!  We got in there and it was chaos with lots of yelling and fights and drug users around us.  We sat on the bed together and did night prayer and sang together, and it seemed to bring some peace around us. Some commented that they liked to hear our prayers. A man overdosed and they gave him a shot of Narcan and he jumped right back up.  He would have died without that shot!"  Trying to imagine being blind in that place and hearing the craziness all around you!  Then to pray and feel the change going on!  So powerful!

Sheep in Saint Pierre, France... the place where they have their home is in the foothills of the Pyranees Mountains - land where sheep graze to keep the grass used.

So beautiful to see the reality of the lambs - The Community of the Lamb is Hallel's order and Jesus shows us how we are to LOVE - "Wounded, I will never cease to love."

My day is getting away from me, and there is still so much I long so share here... for future sharing!  We are overwhelmed by the baskets of fragments we are finding after our time in His presence as he feeds the Poor!

Jesus, The Lamb of God, how we long to always follow you and when you tell us to do this or that on our Journey we know that we will answer "yes!"  Even when we cannot see you at work and what seems to be hopeless or pointless - your Plan is over all and in all and we need not fear for you are with us!  Jesus, we are YOURS!  Jesus we trust in you.  Amen and Hallelujah

 Open window weather!  We felt that we had come to springtime!

My Most Cherished Cross, Patrick, his huge hands folded in prayer and he gazes upon our nun, Little Sister Hallel, her "yes" to Jesus, her spouse, has given us many huge baskets overflowing filled with fragments of the Bread of LIFE he has fed our poor and hungry weak and lowly selves!  Overhead the Lamb looks down and reminds us that no matter the pain of wounds we receive we must continue to LOVE!  "Wounded, I will never cease to LOVE!"  Bless-bless, Barb

Salve Regina - Hail Holy Queen sang by the Community each night to Mary the Mother of God by The Community - How I love this!

Happy Feast day
Saint Bernadette Soubirous
1844-1879
Feast Day: February 18
Patronage: Bodily illness
Marie-Bernarde Soubirous was a miller's daughter born in Lourdes, France. She is best known as the seer of the Marian apparition know as Our Lady of Lourdes, where Mary Identified herself as the Immaculate Conception. She joined the Sisters at Nevers at the age of 22 and spent the rest of her brief life there. She contracted tuberculosis and died of the illness at the age of 35. Her body has remained incorrupt.

Another Salve Regina - Gregorian chant