Posted on 09/10/2005 3:34:22 PM PDT by Maeve
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On the Fourth Anniversary of 9/11 it is a good time to renew the Solemn Consecration of America to the Immaculate Heart of Mary which was undertaken by the American bishops in the 19th century.
Ask your Bishop or Archbishop to renew the Solemn Consecration within your diocese with his calling on all priests, religious, and laity to join in the Solemn Act of Consecration of the diocese of archdiocese on the FIRST SATURDAY of OCTOBER 2005, the Feast of St. Therese, the Little Flower of the Child Jesus.
Separately, approach your parish priest and ask him to have a Solemn Consecration of your parish to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on the FIRST SATURDAY of OCTOBER 2005, the Feast of St. Therese, the Little Flower of the Child Jesus.
On your own, engage in this Solemn Act of Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary during this time of the sad anniversary of 9/11, when the heartbreak of Katrina continues, and when other sorrows have not yet happened.
Immaculate Heart of Mary ping
Novena Prayer to the Immaculate Heart of Mary
O Most Blessed Mother, heart of love, heart of mercy, ever listening, caring, consoling, hear our prayer. As your children, we implore your intercession with Jesus your Son. Receive with understanding and compassion the petitions we place before you today, especially ...(special intention).
We are comforted in knowing your heart is ever open to those who ask for your prayer. We trust to your gentle care and intercession, those whom we love and who are sick or lonely or hurting. Help all of us, Holy Mother, to bear our burdens in this life until we may share eternal life and peace with God forever.
Amen.
May our Lord and His Blessed Mother have mercy on us!
Movie fantasy is now inadequate to describe our reality. No terror conjured by Hollywood could match what the people in our city saw and heard and felt in their bones that day.
Monsignor Ignace Sadek, the elderly pastor of the Maronite cathedral near the Brooklyn waterfront, went to the promenade park overlooking lower Manhattan and prayed for absolution for the dying as the towers burned. When the first building crumbled, and the terrible cloud of smoke, debris, and incinerated human remains began its grim march across the harbor, Monsignor Sadek remained at his post praying. The falling ash turned him into a ghost. Still, he stayed as long as he could. This is a man who came through the civil war in Lebanon, and he doesnt run.
"People could see I was a priest," he told me later (he is my pastor). "They ran to me and knelt at my feet, and begged for absolution." Think of that: The people of this proud, defiantly secular city, driven to their knees in prayer, begging for mercy in a hot, gray fog. That is what purgatory must be like.
A Catholic colleague tells me a devout friend of his in Washington, D.C., always takes the same flight from Dulles Airport to LAX. But the weekend before September 11, he had a strong feeling that he should cancel his reservation. He fought it, !but finally succumbed. The plane he was supposed to have been on crashed into the Pentagon.
I told my wife this story, hoping to cheer her up. It made her cry. "Why didnt God warn the others, too?" she asked.
On the afternoon of September 11, I ran into an immigrant Arab Christian friend on a street in our neighborhood that is home to a number of Muslim-owned businesses. "Listen," he told me. "If you ask these Muslims in these shops what they think of the attack, they will tell you its horrible. But thats not whats in their hearts. Im telling you what I know."
After a prayer service for the dead at our Maronite church (which lost six parishioners in the calamity), I talked to some young Arab immigrants about their fears of anti-Arab pogroms. One of the young men had just been deported from our great ally, Saudi Arabia, because he had been discovered praying to Jesus in a private house. These people argued that Americans shouldnt stereotype Muslims. They said that they were friends with many good Muslims here.
"Tell me," I asked them, "do these Muslims donate money to the terrorist cause?" All admitted that yes, many of their friends do.
Rod Dreher was so moved by this expression of faith that he named his 2nd son after Monsignor Ignace Sadek. Since posting this report to Crisis Magazine, Rod and his family have relocated to Dallas, TX.
Thanks for the post. I think the part of the article about the crosses was fascinating. I hadn't heard about that.
"A small stir was made in the media about demonic faces photographed in the smoke !and fireball of September 11. But you probably havent heard about the crosses. My Lutheran uncle is an FBI chaplain. He phoned me from ground zero and told me a small field of crosses had been discovered in the rubble of World Trade Center 6.
They were a series of massive I-beams that had fallen from the top of the tower that was second to collapse. The beams landed in a peculiar fashion, as if they were crosses that had been planted upright by an unseen hand."
O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.
May the divine assistance remain always with us. Amen.
Where did you get that image? It's very nice: sort of modern, yet still traditional in a way (I know that is sort of wierd to say).
Msgr. Sadek is a great and holy man of God. A saint - in the way that people who come in contact with him know that they have been in the presence of a saint.
You can click on the picture and be taken to their website or here is the link: http://users.net1plus.com/artcatholic/arthome.html
Thanks Maeve for the ping."Oh Mary conceived without sin pray for us who has recourse to You".Please pray for the soul of my Husband's Father who died yesterday.His name was Ed-84-died quickly.
Thanks for the thread. You're just like your mom!
Blessings always.
That's the nicest thing you could have said. Thank you.
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