Fish picnic on the roof after Good Friday service/The great silence /Lucy's first Holy week - Easter/Safe travels from KCK - +JMJ+

In 3 days she will be 3 months and she is embracing her Most Cherished Cross for the first of many times in her lifetime.  Her first Good Friday is now behind her, and now for her first Easter!

Grandma had the gift of watching over sweet Lucy Marie while mom and dad with Jude and Birdie attended Good Friday services.  I think she was busy with outfit changes and hair bows/flowers.

She had been all smiles, but was a bit serious about what Jesus did for us - He laid down his life for his friends, Lucy!  

Good Friday behind her now or beside her would be a more accurate way of describing it.

A rooftop picnic happened with Ruth and Paul and their 7 as the sun warmed us where a dormer will be built for the new kitchen on this 3rd floor apartment.  Two one bedroom apartments will be on the 3rd floor with a much roomier kitchen now with the dormer. 

Ruth thought ahead and brought along the blankets to sit on, and grandpa supplied the food for lunch with the 11 of us.

Two other churches in the view.

A kitchen wall with the exposed brick that Ruth has worked hard on.  These windows were covered up by tin - so much more light now!  

My favorite view from a 3rd floor window.  Only about half an hour before there was a traffic jam as the church was full for the noon Good Friday service!  It would have been fun to record that happening.  Then Arby's was so busy with those going for their fish sandwiches after.

Tom and mom having lunch in the sun.  

the view of The Church never gets old for me.  

Pat is very interested in all that is going on.  The dormer on the other side is taking shape.  Ruth showed us all around and I marvel at her love for this stuff!  My parents were like Ruth and Paul and then it skipped a generation with me, although my brother, Dan, and his wife and like Ruth and Paul, too.

The dormer on the other side for the kitchen in that apartment.  The door will go out to the patio they will have for some sweet outdoor space!  

Windows that were covered up with tin... so much more light!  That door will go out to their large outside deck.

The other side of the 2nd floor apartment - these will be 2 bedroom apartments!  

Lucy is amazed at Ruth and Paul and the difference they are making in the neighborhood of our beloved Catholic Church!  

The Good Friday Procession as they follow the Cross pondering The Crucifixion in the inner City of Kansas City, KS yesterday from Bill and Nancy.  Gus, Dom and Bernadette walking with many young adults that were there on retreat with The Community of the Lamb.  Up ahead you can see Jesus lifted up on the Cross.

Nancy's kids by Hallel during the procession of Jesus's Crucifixion.

Josephine in a sundress at it was in the 60s there yesterday.  Nancy shared that they all are a bit sunburnt.  When Nancy and Bill lived there 3 years ago for 3-4 years they always had such warm weather compared to here.  Look at the green grass compared to our endless snow banks.  

8 years ago Hallel making the Cross into The Tree of LIFE which is what it truly is!  From it we have been given LIFE everlasting!  

Grandma does not give up without an all out effort!  A wardrobe change and on her grandma Lila's beautiful quilt and gazing upon the wood of the Cross on which hung the Savior of the world!  

Truth which will set us free!  

LOVE Isaiah 55!!!

A painting I did in 2017 and just found this morning.  I had to put in on the table with a lit candle - it is all here calving and Hallel and small paintings by T.

God became man and died for us and Mary said "yes" and stood at the foot of the Cross and never left his side!  "Here is your Mother."  There is nothing more wonderful than to bring her into our home!  

Use me Lord!  

A quilt from the kids - I made this square in 1998 - the year Ruth graduated from HS.  

I had to put away all my winter/Christmas decor today and think Spring!  

Bill and 5 of the kids with Jesus on the Cross in Kansas City.

In the Grotto of Mary the Mother of God where miracles are prayed for.  

Archbishop Joseph Naumann this morning with Morning Prayer on Holy Saturday.  Hallel shared that he always comes for Morning office on Holy Saturday.

A parting family photo with our Hallel and the icon of The Crucifixion on the side of Lumen Christi/Light of Christ Monastery in the heart of Kansas City, Kansas this bright sunny morning. 

Dominic getting his hug from Aunt Hallel!  He is named for St Dominic and Hallel's order is Dominican.  A great and special connection with his Aunt, who is a nun.  

Such a lucky boy to have her example as a Bride of Christ in his life, and that of all our family including 23 nieces and nephews to grow in their love of Jesus, Mary, the Saints and The Church with her example and life she shares with all of us!  

Sisters - #4 Daughter and #2 daughter sharing their Faith.  Nancy and Bill are now returning to their home parish in Delano, St Maximilian Kolbe for Gus to serve at the Vigil tonight.  

A special picture from my sister, Marty, this morning with some special care taken at my parents' grave for Easter.  She lives very close by and they care for mom and dad very well.  Thank you!  Wintry with all that snow still.  

The leaves are here for Easter.  

Easter tree is coming to LIFE!  So much JOY!  

Wonderful writing about The Shroud - the Flag of Resurrection.  

It is so good take the time to read this!  

I was surprised that dad didn't have my name in the margins.  I definitely have tears aplenty happy or sad.  Brother Victor and dad are a daily joy for me!  

LIGHT is so special at the Vigil!  Last year I actually set myself on fire literally.  I had a big hole in the front of my dress.  Crazy!  

Tom getting ready for Easter!  

Oh my!  Sweet Tom makes me so humble with his LOVE for his old grandma!

Happy Easter ALL!  Jesus, we love you and adore you with our whole lives.  May we die to self so that we may be your hands and feet and voice.  Jesus, we trust in you.  Bless-bless, Barbara and the 34

 Holy Saturday is sacred as the day of the Lord's rest; it has been called

the "Second Sabbath" after creation. The day is and should be the most calm

and quiet day of the entire Church year, a day broken by no liturgical function

and is chiefly a day of solemn vigil for the Lord’s resurrection. 

HOLY SATURDAY

"Holy Saturday is the day of God’s silence. It must be a day of silence.

We must do everything possible so that it is a day of silence, as that Day,

which was the day of God’s silence. Jesus placed in the sepulcher shares with the

whole of humanity the tragedy of death as a silence that speaks and expresses love

as solidarity with all those ever abandoned, which the Son of God reaches filling the

emptiness that only the infinite mercy of God the Father can fill. God is silent,

but out of love. In this day love, that silent love, becomes expectation of life

in the resurrection. We think of Holy Saturday: it will do us good to think of

the silence of Our Lady, “the Believer,” who in silence awaited the Resurrection.

Our Lady must be the icon for us of that Holy Saturday. To think much of how

Our Lady lived that Holy Saturday, in expectation. It is a love that does not doubt, but

that hopes in the Lord’s word, and which becomes manifest and splendid on Easter day."

 Pope Francis, Wednesday Audience, 03/23/16

 

 

"The last day of the Holy Week:  a fruitful stillness before the breathtaking action of the night.

Perhaps only the greatest Russian writers have succeeded

in painting it as it is, a pause, a last moment of waiting,

made holy by the Lord's rest in the tomb.

 

The Church is waiting at the tomb and weeps. 

She sees where the Lord has been laid, where the woman had

buried Adam, where man is buried where he had come to grief

through her evil counsel. She sees it and weeps. She weeps at the

Lord's tomb, as the Lord wept for Lazarus: for sin which killed

the giver of all life. But her tears are soft, and she is at peace. . . .

The death of Adam has lost its terrors in the tomb 
of Christ. The death for obedience' sake has snuffed out sin.

No longer does a massa damnata blunder on from sin to sin and death to death, but the body of the obedient Christ rests in hope. 

A foreboding of the happy chance of fault which merited

such and so great a redeemer. It is a foreboding of the

blessedness of suffering earning 'the name which is above

all names', and the 'glory of God the Father', which makes

the seers — men and the Church — at peace and full of hope."

D. Aemiliana Löhr, The Great Week

 

 

 

“Today a great silence reigns on earth,

a great silence and a great stillness. A great silence because

the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God

has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have

slept ever since the world began. . . He has gone to search

for Adam, our first father, as for a lost sheep."

From ancient homily, Liturgy of the Hours, Holy Saturday

Ancient Homily for Holy Saturday - YouTube (7:47 mins)

"... Holy Saturday...the more I reflect on it, the more

this seems to be fitting for the nature of our human life: 

we are still awaiting Easter; we are not yet standing

in the full light but walking toward it full of trust."

 

- Pope Benedict XVI, Milestones: Memoirs, 1927-1977

Danielle Rose - I played her music for Lucy and she stopped crying and watched and listened

 

This is how one loves - Good Friday/"like a lamb led to the slaughter..." Isaiah 52/Hallel and Nancy together again in KCK - +JMJ+

Nancy with Hallel in Kansas City yesterday - sunny and 65!  Hallel has not seen Regina for almost a year now, and Nancy hasn't been to Kansas for over a year.

My heart is soaring to heights on this day as I am loving to think that my two daughters are sharing the powerful day.  Good Friday is of deep sadness as Jesus is The Lamb led to the slaughter for our sins!  Hallel's Community of the Lamb looks to Jesus The Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!  

Hallel and 11 year old Augustine.  They lived in Kansas just outside of the inner city in Shawnee for 3-4 years.  

Nancy had a regular hour of Adoration each week there, and many Sundays they would come for mass.  Other than leaving their church and school family there.  One of the hardest was to leave their weekly times with The Community.  Hallel wasn't always there, but they still are family and we love to spend time with them.

10 year old Bernadette with her Aunt Hallel.

I am missing being there with them, but hubby said that we might be going next weekend when it is less busy for our nun and it of course it better to go with hubby!  

Josephine gives the best hugs!  She is 6 going on 7 in a few weeks.  Yes, that is green grass!  Here is still looks like winter, although a lot could be melting these next days.  Easter Sunday mid 50s!

Bernadette in the Mary Grotto behind the Little Brothers Monastery - The LIGHT of Mary the Mother of God.  

Nancy and sweet baby Regina Maria, who is now soon to be 16 months. 

They had to expand the seating to outside the Monastery - Lumen Christi/Light of Christ.  I am sure with the kids that has its up and downs.  Less noise but harder to control when they are sitting outside in the sun on the green grass of KCK!  

10 year old Rose Again in the Passion Play that the 5th grade class puts on every year.  She is representing Jesus as he meets the weeping women on the way to his Crucifixion!  She will be 11 on May 1st.

Rose in Kansas City with the empty tomb 8 years ago.  There is such a great blessing for our grankids to have a nun in our family!  They share so much in her wonderful LIFE, and I am given the gift to be a nun for a few days after I discerned a call as I was coming into The Church as a 20 year old convert.  

Family Soul Story - Choose Life!: The amazing story of the 13 becoming Catholic! 

The sun rising over this Good Friday 2023 with the Most Rugged Cross weathered and broken after it marked the beginning and end of The Stations of The Cross that Maria made and put in our grove at the farm when she returned from the Poor Clares after discerning a call for 5 months behind the enclosure.  The sign that she put by the Crucifix in her brother's room - "This is how one loves"  So powerful!  

Sunrise this holy morning with a flock of tiny birds up in the tree.

Clouds of incense at the Holy Thursday mass last evening.  It was a glorious mass as we recall Jesus instituting the Last Supper, which we continue on each day in The Church.  

The tabernacle is empty as Jesus in taken to the side altar till Easter.  Even the vigil light was extinguished.  Jesus is going to his death for us!

The Holy of holies!

Kutless - holy of Holies

The Knights add to the pageantry and the respect for their Lord is a sight to behold.

Jesus in the midst of the Knights of Jesus and Mary!  

Though he was harshly treated, he submitted
    and opened not his mouth;
like a lamb led to the slaughter
    or a sheep before the shearers,
    he was silent and opened not his mouth.
Oppressed and condemned, he was taken away,
    and who would have thought any more of his destiny?
When he was cut off from the land of the living,
    and smitten for the sin of his people,
a grave was assigned him among the wicked
    and a burial place with evildoers,
though he had done no wrong
    nor spoken any falsehood.
But the LORD was pleased
    to crush him in infirmity.  Isaiah 52 

The Lamb slain for us as the final Sacrifice - once and for all!  

I need to end this for today.  I am just back from Good Friday and adoring The Cross.  I need to go and watch newest granddaughter, Lucy Marie, so that her family can go to services in an hour plus I need to pray for Fr Denny. Jesus, I am humbled by your unconditional love and forgiveness.  Jesus, we trust in you.  Bless-bless, Barbara and the 34

O crux, ave spes unica!

(Hail, O cross, our only hope!)

GOOD FRIDAY

"His side was pierced as Adam's was; yet there came forth not a

woman who, being beguiled, was to be a death-bearer, but a

fountain of life that regenerates the world by its two streams:

the one to renew us in the baptismal font and clothe us with the

garment of immortality, the other to feed us, the reborn, at the

table of God, just as babes are nourished with milk."

Bishop Theodore of Cyr (15th century)

From the treatise:  On the Incarnation of the Lord

___________________________________

 

Souls have all the same price,

which is that of the Precious Blood of Jesus."

St Charles de Foucauld

"Nature is in mourning covered with darkness during the Holy Hour of the first Good Friday.  The chants of the heavenly Jerusalem are interrupted.  The entire court of Heaven waits in order to receive the last throb of the Heart of the Man-God, the victim of Golgotha.

 

Fervent loving souls,

we are truly at the summit of Calvary:

it is the Holy Hour!

A loud voice resounds in the heights, a voice that says: "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.'  And bending His lacerated Head, Jesus Crucified dies of love.  It is His Heart which out of love for us has brought Him to death.  All glory to His loving Heart which gave us life and which now is stilled in death!"- Fr Mateo Crawley-Boevey

Image above:  Christ Crucified ~ Viktor Vasnetsov (1896)

"Do grant, oh my God,

that when my lips approach Yours to kiss You,

I may taste the gall that was given to You;

when my shoulders lean against Yours,

make me feel Your scourging;

when my flesh is united with Yours,

in the Holy Eucharist,

make me feel Your passion;

when my head comes near Yours,

make me feel Your thorns;
when my heart is close to Yours,

make me feel Your spear."

 

St. Gemma Galgani

________________

 

We adore Thee, O Christ, and we praise Thee

because by Thy holy Cross 
Thou has redeemed the world. 

"Your love is my only martyrdom.

The more I feel it burning in me,
The more my soul desires you…
Jesus, make me die of love for you."

St Thérèse of Lisieux
__________________

"I desire that Adoration take place 
for the intention of imploring Mercy for the world," 
words of Jesus to St Mary Faustina of the Blessed Sacrament

___________________________

 

Danielle Rose - the Crucifixion - a Mother's Song