Tom and his dad picking up bales/Michigan family with 2 entering religious life , and their father coming into The Church! - +JMJ+

Tom is #7 youngest child of Ruth and Paul on the farm.  He will be 2 years old in 4 days, and Ruth sent these sweet pictures of Tom picking up bales with his wonderful dad.  This is quite fresh in his mind as we picked up 900 bales just a few weeks ago.  Part of the time Tom rode with me in the old pickup pulling a trailer that carries 6 bales plus one in the back of the pickup.

Toilet paper rolls make perfect bales!  I recall Tom's older brother, Luke, who was just 10 playing endlessly with picking up round bales.

So cute!  

He even had to put a bale in the back of the pickup!  He was really surprised the first time Paul put a round bale behind us in the pickup!

3 weeks ago we had some intense days of picking up round after round of bales - 900 corn stalk bales.  Tom was my side kick in the old pickup.

Paul loading Ruth pulling the big rack that holds 13 bales.

Come and get these bales off the rack so that we can go and pick up some more, grandpa!  

Pat building the castle walls all around the yard - protection from the winter winds, and bedding for the cattle over the winter.

A bale right behind us in the back of the pickup - Tom had to put one there while he was playing with dad.  He had a good memory when it comes to farm.

It obviously made an impression on him to have a bale so close to us.

He got to ride along with dad and put the bales on the racks too!! 

3 sisters from Michigan that shared this past weekend with us in Kansas City.  The middle one is Abbey, and she is a Postulant with The Little Sisters for this last year.  She is the youngest sister in age, with her older sister, Sydney, living and working in Detroit, and her other sister, Hannah, will be entering Sisters of Bethlehem on November 29th. 

A precious keepsake for this family - Abbey, Sydney, and Hannah.  Two of them are entering religious life in two different yet wonderful orders!  

Their parents, David and Beth joining the girls in Kansas City.  They all came to share in the family weekend as Hannah will not be able to travel to see family - they will need to come to see her.  

To add to the JOY and excitement for this family.  Dave is in the process of coming into The Catholic Church at the Easter Vigil!  Baptized, First Communion, and Confirmation!  What a testament of the Lord and Lady at work in their lives and in their Domestic Church/family!  

We have a special connection with them and their amazing priest, Fr Matthias.  He is Therese's Godfather along with Little Sister Hallel as her Godmother!  Father has a powerful ministry called Encounter Ministries - Encounter Ministries  Encounter Ministries is a school of ministry that trains and disciples Catholics to love like Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit. It offers dynamic conferences, events... 

Abbey close to Jesus beside our Hallel as we adored in His Presence surrounded by the Word of God and the songs of angels singing to their beloved.

“Our Cloister is the World”: Chewing on the Gospel with the Community of the Lamb — theYoungCatholicWoman  A beautiful article that shares the life of The Little Sisters and Little Brothers around the world! 

By Lindsey Weishar,



I remember a particular night back in October 2019. It was dark and the sky was dappled with stars. In this Kansas City, KS neighborhood, there were hardly any streetlights to compete with the bright half-moon. That night, the Little Brothers and Sisters of the Lamb invited young adults to go on a rosary procession through this neighborhood, which is also home to their monasteries. A shooting had occurred in a nearby building the week before, and they wanted to cover the neighborhood in prayer. 

It was beautiful to take candles through darkened streets, to pray a rosary which alternated between Spanish and English, to watch the little brothers and sisters hand candles to their neighbors. They are a visible reminder to myself and to the world that despite the sorrow, the suffering, the woundedness we experience, there is hope. And His name is Christ.

A deep love of neighbor

A Dominican congregation born in France in 1981, the Community of the Lamb has monasteries in Europe, South America, and the U.S. (currently, Kansas City, KS is the only U.S. location). They are a mendicant order, which for the Community of the Lamb means its members go out into their neighborhood, asking their neighbors for food, a practice which promotes the dignity of the neighbors as well as fraternity, and recalls, as little sister Pauline relates, how Jesus “sent his apostles out two by two without money or an extra tunic, surrendering them to His providence.” The Community’s love for the poor is further expressed in a weekly open table, where their neighbors and those needing a meal can join them for dinner. 

The Community also has a deep connection with young adults, whom they also invite for a weekly mass and dinner, and to participate in liturgies, night vigils, walking pilgrimages, rosary processions, and neighborhood missions that are part of the Community’s life. 

I had the opportunity to sit down with two little sisters: Pauline, who met the little sisters in France when she was 18, and Candice, who recently returned from formation in France. Both mentioned being drawn to the Community’s love for the poor and its liturgy.

When little sister (ls) Pauline first met the Community of the Lamb, she witnessed the inextricable link between prayer and the poor that this order evinced. “I was struck by the beauty of [the] liturgy offered to the poor.” She came to understand that the little sisters’ role in the world was to “be a presence” to those around them, and to “contemplate [Christ’s] face in the face of the poor.” Similarly, ls Candice was struck by how her spirit matched the spirit of the Community: there was room both for contemplation and for being with the poor. 

Chewing on the Word

As a contemplative community, prayer is at the heart of the little brothers and sisters’ lives. Meditation and manducation animate both their fraternal life as a community and their interactions with their neighbors. Manducation is the Community’s word for an ancient tradition of meditating on Scripture. This “chewing on the Word” involves repeating lines from the Gospel many times so that the Word begins to penetrate their hearts and minds, leading them deeper into love of prayer and the Lord. ls Candice adds, “We sometimes ask ourselves three questions during this time: Who are you, God? Who am I? What path of conversion are you calling me to today? And we listen to what God has to say to us through His Word.” 

As a young adult who has experienced the friendship of the little brothers and sisters, I’ve heard the community manducate the Gospel after it has been read by the priest during Mass. I’ve also participated in manducation during adoration with the Community, in which a passage from the Bible is read, and then, like a verbal lectio divina, anyone praying can share a word or phrase that stuck out to them. After the time of prayer, we might gather for dinner and share a “pearl” of our manducation—an image, idea, or inspiration that came to us through spending time with the Word. As ls Pauline says of the Community’s life: “What we receive in prayer we share with others…Fraternal life is the first place to practice the Gospel. What we manducated, we have to live out in fraternal life. It’s the first place we are beggars.”

Young adults pray with the Community of the Lamb at the Lumen Christi Monastery



This deep abiding with the Gospel gives the little sisters and brothers room to go out into the world. ls Pauline sees parallels between the little sisters and cloistered nuns: Their lives are steeped in prayer and they don’t have a designated apostolate; but for the little sisters, “our cloister is the world.” ls Candice shares that the little sisters and brothers live out the Gospel in the position of mendicant before God and neighbor. Citing Jesus’ call for our hearts in his words, “I stand at the door and knock,” she reflects, “He doesn’t force us to love him, but asks, begs, for our love.” ls Pauline adds, “Jesus himself is a beggar; God is mendicant of our yes, of our love. This experience of the vulnerability of God—we want to share it by this gesture of being mendicant ourselves.” Two or three times a week, the sisters go out into their neighborhood, knock on their neighbors’ doors, and ask for something to eat.  

As in all their interactions with those within and outside their monastery, the Community’s friendship with young adults is based on the Gospel. Young adults who want to journey with the little brothers and sisters are invited to become a Young Adult of the Lamb, which ls Pauline describes as “being a young adult in the world…but living his or her prayer life by manducating, living out the spirit of the community as a young adult, to be a child of light.” Similarly, older lay people, children, and priests can also participate in the Community’s charism and prayer.   

The Community of the Lamb’s motto, from a cupola in the Lumen Christi Monastery.

This gift of the Community’s life and love to God and neighbor is encapsulated in the image of Christ as lamb. The motto of the order is “Wounded, I will never cease to love.” As ls Candice shares, “A lamb is the only animal that when you want to kill it, it doesn’t resist; it actually turns its head to be slain. This is the image of Jesus’s love offered on the Cross.” ls Pauline adds, “Jesus, like the lamb, gives his life for us, and even though men put him to death, He offers us the gift of His Resurrection. The little brothers and little sisters want to be witnesses of Jesus’ victory and love.” And this image is one the Community of the Lamb embodies in their deep devotion to their relationship with God and through their friendships with all people whose lives they touch. 

Learn more about the Community of the Lamb here!

As parents of a Little Sister - we are lifted up and grow in our Faith with the help of our nun and our other children, who are very strong in their Faith and love for Jesus, Mary and our beloved Catholic Church!  

Little Brother Francis Xavier brought Jesus close to us making the sign of the Cross with the monstrance - We could feel His LOVE!  

The middle of the 3 sisters, Hannah, has discerned a call to enter the Sisters of Bethlehem in New York at the end of the month.  This was a precious weekend for this family to have time together!  

The Monastic Family of Bethlehem, of the Assumption of the Virgin and of Saint Bruno – or simply known as Monastic Brothers of Bethlehem and Monastic Sisters of Bethlehem – is a Roman Catholic institute of consecrated life that practices the Carthusian spirituality and was founded through the inspiration of a small group of French pilgrims on November 1, 1950, at St. Peter's Square, in the Vatican City, following the promulgation of the dogma of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary into Heaven.

Some pictures I came across of the Sisters of Bethlehem, and here is about their spirituality...Carthusian spirituality is based on the Greek and L,atin patristic spiritual theology focused on the reformation of the image of God in man deformed by sin1. The spirituality is centered on the reintegration of the passions disintegrated by sin, with discretio as the governor of all the other spiritual virtues1. Silence is a key element of Carthusian spirituality, but it is not lived in any absolute way in the charterhouse2. Carthusians speak with their brothers and their superiors when they need to, they speak whenever material life, work or their soul require it2.

They live in hermitages 

Discretio is a Latin term that refers to the ability to distinguish that which comes from God from that which does not come from Him. In Carthusian spirituality, discretio is the governor of all the other spiritual virtues. It is the ability to discern the spirits and to distinguish between good and evil, truth and falsehood, and to make wise choices in life. At its most basic level, Carthusian spirituality consists of the Greek and Latin patristic spiritual theology focused on the reformation of the image of God in man deformed by sin and the reintegration of the passions disintegrated by sin, with discretio as the governor of all the other spiritual virtues 12.

Praying and chanting prayer together.  It looks to be another wonderful option for a woman living a life for her Lord, Jesus Christ!  

Pope Benedict XVI today in his daily devotions.  It reminds me of my children that lead me deeper into my Faith journey, along with my wonderful parents, who continue to share with me such beauty each day from what they left behind for me... my father, Deacon Robert Cross, leaving his well marked prayer of The Church, and his daily sharings by "My man, Brother Victor,"  and Mom leaving her well worn daily meditations by Pope Benedict XVI - she read it 10 years over and over and I am on my 3rd!  

I also am blessed by meeting this wonderful family, and their journeys shared with me!  I pray each day for my nun on the 4th decade of the rosary and Abbey and Hannah and their family are included now there each day.  Jesus and Mary hold them close to your heart burning with love for them.  Jesus, we trust in you.  Bless-bless, Barbara and the 33 plus many Little Sisters and Little Brothers

A kind and wonderful and wise man!  Mr Rogers

We must never forget that the Church is built around Christ and that,

as St Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas and St Albert the Great 
have all said, following St Paul (cf. 1 Corinthians 10:17),
the Eucharist is the sacrament of the Church's unity, because 
we all form one single body of which the Lord is the head."

Benedict XVI, 49th Intern’l Eucharistic Congress,

Quebec City, 6/22/08

 

 

THROUGH THE HOLY SPIRIT

HE OFFERED HIMSELF WITHOUT BLEMISH TO GOD

 

TO THE ONE WHO LOVED US
WHO  WASHED OUR SINS THROUGH HIS BLOOD 

AND MADE US KINGS AND PRIESTS OF GOD HIS FATHER 

TO HIM BE GLORY AND POWER. AMEN

 

 

"I adore You, O Precious Blood of Jesus, flower of creation, fruit of virginity, ineffable instrument of the Holy Spirit, and I rejoice at the thought that You came from the drop of virginal blood on which eternal Love impressed its movement; You were assumed by the Word and deified in His person. I am overcome with emotion when I think of Your passing from the Blessed Virgin's heart into the heart of the Word, and, being vivified by the breath of the Divinity, becoming adorable because You became the Blood of God.

 

I adore You enclosed in the veins of Jesus, preserved in His humanity like the manna in the golden urn, the memorial of the eternal Redemption which He accomplished during the days of His earthly life. I adore You, Blood of the new, eternal Testament, flowing from the veins of Jesus in Gethsemane, from the flesh torn by scourges in the Praetorium, from His pierced hands and feet and from His opened side on Golgotha. I adore You in the Sacraments, in the Eucharist, where I know You are substantially present....

I place my trust in You, O adorable Blood, our Redemption, our regeneration. Fall, drop by drop, into the hearts that have wandered from You and soften their hardness.

O adorable Blood of Jesus, wash our stains, save us from the anger of the avenging angel. Irrigate the Church; make her fruitful with Apostles and miracle-workers, enrich her with souls that are holy, pure and radiant with divine beauty."  - Meditations on the Precious Blood of Jesus from writings of St Albert

 

St Albert the Great (Albertus Magnus)

Dominican, Doctor of the Church 
Teacher and Mentor of St Thomas Aquinas

Patron of scientists and philosophers

Motto:  "To want everything that I want

for the glory of God,

to wish and do everything

only and always for His glory."  

Germany ~ 1280 +
Incorruptible

Feast Day - November 15
________________________

It has been said that 
St. Albert was a scientist by temperament, 
a philosopher by deliberate choice 
and a theologian by mood.

 

 

“My soul, if you wish to be intimate with Mary, let yourself

be carried between her arms and nourished with her blood…

Let this ineffable, chaste thought accompany you to the

Banquet of God and you will find in the Blood of the Son

the nourishment of the Mother.” - St Albert

 

Click here: St. Albert the Great - YouTube (2 Mins)

St Albert the Great, pray for us!

 

Salve Regina as sung by the Dominicans - Hallel's order each night before going to their cells.  The sound of angels!

O God beyond all praising 

Danielle Rose