Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe

Attended Spanish Mass today at St Sylvester's. Love how our Hispanic brothers and sisters pull out all the stops for this very important feast day. Lovely that it fell this year on the third Sunday of Advent. Oh how I want to learn Spanish. At the end of the Mass a Tijuana type band, I think, played down the aisle and serenaded Our Lady. Very cool!

Peace!

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Blessings

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What I had to do for another, to help out, has been accomplished. It filled a genuine need and was not solely filling my own need to help: two important checks for me. You know, sometimes folks need to vent or just need a shoulder or an ear. That's fine I think. All I'm saying is I used to really help others a lot of times to fill my own "helping" needs, so I try not to do that. Of course, I received a blessing in the doing for someone else. It usually works out that way. Sometimes pure sacrifice occurs, united with Christ's suffering,  and the blessing is just "doing the right thing".

The pics are visuals of a recent blessing for my mom (aka Mama Gladys). Mom has had to have a large, benign tumor removed twice from around her right, inner ear. The rub is that both times it has been wound around crucial elements like her jugular vein and facial nerve, among others. The good Dr. down in Gainesville was able to remove it all, but he had to string her facial nerve out like a "telephone line", he said, to really get it all. As a result, for about sixth months that side of her face was paralyzed, with a possibility of losing facial tone forever. She kept her chin up (figuratively anyway), dealt with the drooling and eye not closing. When I visited the last two weekends (to see Uncle Macky), as shown in top pic, it is almost completely better!

Thankful!

Peace!

A cheerful giver...

Big sigh! I am going to be a bit cryptic, but I think folks will understand, generally, what I'm talking about.

Someone in my life needs me to do something I REALLY don't want to do, but KNOW it's the right thing to do. I have been complaining about it both verbally and in my head all morn. Then, the bit about being cheerful popped into my head, and I decided to vent it here, along with one of the goofy pics one of my sis's and I often send back and forth to one another.

Basically, Lord, where I am weak, you are strong. Give me the grace to be a cheerful giver, 'cause I ain't feelin' it!

Peace...

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Regrets

My Uncle Macky has inoperable brain cancer. It's crummy that part of why I feel sad is because I have been back in the panhandle for 2 yrs and have not been to see him and Aunt Elizabeth. I was even over in Chattahoochee one day for a job interview and didn't stop by. Cue tears. Uncle Macky has painstakingly taken care of Aunt Lizbeth for 4 years, since her severe stroke. They are forever the lovebirds. Even now. Prayers please.

Hail holy queen, mother of mercy our life our sweetness and our hope. To thee do we cry poor banished children of eve, to thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears. Turn then most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us, and after this our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Oh clement, oh loving, oh sweet virgin Mary. Pray for us, oh holy mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ.

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Liturgy of the Hours

I love the app for my new android phone for the liturgy of the hours. It is from http://www.universalis.com/. How awesome are free apps? I usually only get one prayer time in, but it's all there for you in this great app.

The other two apps I really like are one for a rosary and another that has the daily readings and reflections from different sources. The readings are included with the liturgy of the hours app above, but the reflection is by a layman, and I really like for the reflection to be by a priest or from a saint. I'm just sayin'.

I just typed in "catholic" I think into the android market search tool on my new phone to find these apps.

I've been training for a new job and it has gotten me up earlier than usual. Hopefully I will stick to it and make it to 8:30am daily mass at St Sylvester's - my fondest hope...That would be the best way to get my readings and reflection, I reckon!

Peace!

Pic is from Wikimedia Commons by Daniel Tibi (Dti) | daniel-tibi.de

New Link - Virtual Rosary

Pic is from Photobucket.

Over on the right is now a link to the Virtual Rosary. You download a simple program to your computer, so you can pray the Rosary easily. For those of us that didn't grow up Catholic, the prayers are nicely presented. Also, you can download different modules. I am partial to the scriptural Rosary by the Carmelite sisters and the stained glass images.

For folks unfamiliar with what the Rosary is and think it is just mindless prayer to Mary or worship of Mary, here is a some info by Pope John Paul II from the Vatican website http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/apost_letters/documents/hf_jp-ii_apl_20021016_rosarium-virginis-mariae_en.html :

The Rosary, though clearly Marian in character, is at heart a Christocentric prayer. In the sobriety of its elements, it has all the depth of the Gospel message in its entirety, of which it can be said to be a compendium.(2) It is an echo of the prayerof Mary, her perennial Magnificat for the work of the redemptive Incarnation which began in her virginal womb. With the Rosary, the Christian people sits at the school of Mary and is led to contemplate the beauty on the face of Christ and to experience the depths of his love. Through the Rosary the faithful receive abundant grace, as though from the very hands of the Mother of the Redeemer. 

AND

5. But the most important reason for strongly encouraging the practice of the Rosary is that it represents a most effective means of fostering among the faithful that commitment to the contemplation of the Christian mystery which I have proposed in the Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte as a genuine “training in holiness”: “What is needed is a Christian life distinguished above all in the art of prayer”.(9) Inasmuch as contemporary culture, even amid so many indications to the contrary, has witnessed the flowering of a new call for spirituality, due also to the influence of other religions, it is more urgent than ever that our Christian communities should become “genuine schools of prayer”.(10)

Peace

Pope Benedict XVI

Pic is from Wikimedia Commons: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BentoXVI-29-10052007.jpg
This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Brazil license.

Article from below is from Catholic News Agency: http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/ :

Peruvian reporter denounces witch hunt against Catholic Church.
Vatican City, April 9 (CNA) .- Peruvian reporter Martha Meier recently published an article in the newspaper El Comercio denouncing the "witch hunt against the Catholic Church" being carried out by the media, which is attempting to smear Pope Benedict XVI over cases of sexual abuse by some members of the clergy.

Meier said those who are seeking to tarnish the Pope's image "want to bring back their outdated ideology."

After noting that the full force of the law must fall upon abusive priests, Meier asked, "Are those who rend their garments over the abominable acts of pedophilia really concerned about children? Do those who spill gobs of ink really seek the truth? The answer is no."

Through their disinformation, she argued, "they discredit the Catholic Church, they cast blame on everyone and want to make the more than 2 billion Catholics all feel guilty."

"Sexual abuse of pre-teen children by priests is the exception, not the norm," Meier said. "The statistics reveal that it is an uncommon situation that involves 0.3% of the clergy."

The Peruvian author then compared the treatment given to these few cases in the Church with those of humanitarian agencies such as the United Nations in emergency zones.

"Should the UN Peacekeeping forces disappear? Are Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and his predecessors responsible?" she asked, referring to abuses carried out by peacekeeping troops. "If we followed the logic of the anti-clericals we would have to blame them, because the actions continue in those places where there ought to be help for those most in need," she explained.

Meier said the kind of witch hunt being carried out against the Church does nothing to further democracy and ends up being a perverse and opportunistic form of terrorism.

Peace...