"My last day with a 3 year old!"/He took all my sins!?!/The Old Rugged Cross/Joy with and in Morning prayer

Stepped into the house while I waited for Pat to take a cow to be butchered.  "Today is my last day with a 3 year old."  Ruth announced as she hugged her youngest, Joy.  "Tomorrow is your birthday, Joy, and you will be 4!"  

These two are very close... Joy adores her wonderful mommy!  They bake and garden and care for the animals and share their days together.  

Joy came with grandma and grandpa to Ruthton about 20 minutes away.  Joy told us that she wants a purple and green bike that goes as fast as a motorcycle, and a phone for her birthday.  The phone will have to wait a dozen years or more, Joy!

A tease of the photo shoot that I quickly did in front of the huge picture window.  How I love the sunlight there.  Baby kitten with her eyes now open also is better in some that I will keep for tomorrow.

As we traveled... Pat, I and Joy while the cow was in the trailer...we did morning prayer of The Church on my phone.  As I was reading the first Psalm 43 - Longing for the Temple, Joy was excited to hear her name...

Psalm 43 in morning prayer!  "My name!"  How wonderful is it when a young child hears her name in the mass or in the prayer of The Church?!?  So beautiful to have them "see with the eyes of their hearts!"

The second Psalm taken from Isaiah 38 also had her name twice... my dad had underlined it even.  

Dad loved his JOY!  It was cute when I read the reading from Zechariah 12 - "I will pour out on the house of David..."  Joy exclaimed; "David!"  Her brother Big David is also often in the readings, and a special way that the Word comes to life for them.  

When we prayed our petitions... knowing that the prayers of children are special and very powerful... As the Psalm prayer above says - "Lord God, hope of all the earth, hear the humble prayer of your children as we sing your praises.  Pour out your Spirit on us so that  our lives may bear fruit abundantly."  Joy sweetly prayed for grandpa, dad, mom and siblings that are working with the cows and calves "that they be safe."

Open the eyes of my heart, Lord.  Mercy Me

The Palms from Palm Sunday as we enter The Church - The Cross backlit by the bright warm sunlight streaming in the widow behind the altar and tabernacle yesterday as I went in to pray ahead of mass.

The Cross beckons these days of Holy Week so powerfully and deeply!

Pondering this today... I recalled this powerful message left behind for John in his bedroom next to his crucifix. How we were experiencing that Cross and LOVE as a result when our 3rd daughter went behind the enclosure to discern a call to be a cloistered nun!  "This is how one loves!

“This is how one loves”

When Maria left for the monastery on January 1, 2004, she left this sign in her brothers room next to his crucifix on the wall. When she discerned out of the monastery five months later she made a stations of the cross in the Grove for us. This crucifix was on the big maple tree by the garden where we started and finished our stations. If ever there was a picture of an old rugged cross this would be it! Truly this is how one loves!

This is truly an "Old Rugged Cross" if there ever was one! While my father was living here with me for 6 months on hospice as we come up upon the year mark of that happening... dad shared with me that when he was barely 20yo in the army. "Some of the men would kid me and call me 'The Old Rugged Cross.' I was anything but old, but with a last name of Cross it was a way they kidded around with me, I guess." Then dad would start to sing - The Old Rugged Cross

Alan Jackson - the Old Rugged Cross

Loved my time at his feet before mass... the Church was filled with many coming for confession and the rosary.   Fr Denny was busy in the confessional right up to the minute mass started, mass, then stations of the Cross, then back into the Confessional with long lines of penitents.  Very powerful to witness after a year ago being shut in away from The Sacraments of The Church!

The LIGHT of the world! 

I will make you a light to the nations,
    that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.  Isaiah 49 the First reading from mass today shares The Truth!  

Having had the gift of Reconciliation just a few days before... my sins are very real to me and I felt the need to revisit an especially "evil night" from many years ago.  It had been haunting me lately, so I felt the need to once again ask for forgiveness.  Armed with that humbling and hard failure - even the thought of Jesus carrying all my sins to the grave is overwhelming, but add to that all the sins ever committed or ever to be committed... HUGE and impossible to imagine!  It puts The Cross and his suffering in such a perspective of PAIN and SUFFERING UNIMAGINEABLE!

I found myself concentrating on the left shoulder of Christ lifted up for me burdened with ALL our Sins!  Knowing someone, who is not able to lift up their arm due to an injury - this speaks of healing on many levels!

The words of a Poor Clare cloistered nun, Mother Mary Francis

We have a duty to relate our little disappointments to the suffering of his Passion.  We shall never sweat blood.  We shall never be nailed to a cross.  It is very unlikely that anyone would ever spit in our face.  It is extremely difficult to imagine that anyone would ever strike us on our cheek.  We shall not have to carry a cross and fall under it; we shall not have nails through our hands.  But we shall always have many little things to suffer.  WE must not allow ourselves to forget that he knows them all.  He took them upon himself .  He just didn't endure them as something that human nature could not escape.  He wanted to experience them.

A word from Hebrews today in the Office of Readings!

Mom's daily readings book by Pope Benedict XVI has been especially good lately!  May we allow the Holy Spirit's flame to burn away all that distracts us in this world!  

St Paul to the Hebrews calling us to lay aside our sinful ways and keep our eyes fixed on Jesus!  May we learn from Jesus to endure our Cross and embrace our Most Cherished Cross and follow Him down the narrow path with our eyes focused on reaching heaven forever with Jesus, Mary, that Saints and Angels and our dearly departed loved ones, who are praying for us more perfectly now from heaven!

St Paul showing us how to look at the Cross and see with the eyes of our hearts - "This is how one loves!"

The way of The Cross - the Second station - Jesus takes up his Cross!  

The Stations of the Cross written by Mother Angelica

Traveling the Way of the Cross after receiving Jesus in His Body given for me in The Eucharist.  2nd Station - Jesus takes up the Cross

Lord, I am weak and lowly and overwhelmed by the weight of the Cross!  It seems all I can do it drag it with great difficulty and barely make any progress down that narrow path staggering with my weak legs and arms!  May I die to self so that you may live in me and your Holy Spirit may set fire to my heart, mind and soul with your LOVE/LIFE/LIGHT!  Jesus, we trust in you.  Amen

Brother Victor shares a Saint John that I have never known before, and allowed me to enter into this "life of tranquil stillness"/prayer away from the world for 40 years!  After this he wrote - The Ladder!

I need to discover this Ladder of Divine Ascent!  I am continually learning at the feet of my father and his man, Brother Victor-Antione!

John Climacus - The Rungs of His Ladder of Divine Ascent

1. On renunciation of the world
2. On detachment
3. On exile or pilgrimage
4. On blessed and ever-memorable obedience
5. On painstaking and true repentance

Fuzzy but cool to ponder... are those angels or fallen angels pulling some off the ladder?  I am a chicken of heights, so... Jesus, I trust in you.  Bless-bless, Barbara

Noticing the full moon lately - this is a beauty indeed

Danielle Rose- True love - The Cross!

 

Danny Gokey