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Posted on 09/01/2012 7:05:48 AM PDT by Mad Dawg
Clearly we need to seek, to beg God's help in the coming election. I invite all to join in a "Novena" -- a LONG one -- with just such an intention.
If you start on 9/11 (!) and pray for 56 days, you end the day before election day.
If you start on 9/13 and pray for 54 days... you do the math. :-)
I am asking us to consider ADDING something to our daily prayers. I know you all are busy and I suspect many of you spend a good deal of time in prayer anyway. I do not seek to bind burdens on anyone's back. Though prayer sometimes involves teeth-gritting, that should not be the main theme! The main themes should always be hope, joy, and gratitude, IMHO.
But the prayer of a just man avails much, and we are justified in Jesus! So let us pray! Please consider adding ONE thing -- an act of charity and mercy, a little extra time in prayer and/or with Scripture, maybe a little fast -- or a even little extra physical exercise! But add just one thing to the Glory of our loving God and with a petition that He do HIS will in the coming election.
[Boring technical stuff for non-Catholics. The term "novena" refers to a period of prayer. It derives from, so to speak, riffing on the nine days of prayer between the Ascension and the Pentecost. Hence the name, which pretty much means "niney-thing" -- Mad Dawg translation.
[ Not so long ago, in our tradition, somebody was instructed to pray a novena of 6 novenas -- 3 of petition and 3 of thanksgiving. Good stuff ensued. Thus arose the 54 day novena. With JPII's change of the Rosary, a figure divisible by four is tidier for those who pray the Rosary. Hence my suggestion of 56 days.]
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Heavenly Father, In your heart-rending mystery, you made these infants, the Holy Innocents, great and glorious warriors and witnesses to the splendor and power of the Son's saving act. By their intercession and your grace, restore our innocence, strengthen our resolve, and establish our faith, So that, no matter what opposition we meet, we may testify to the Life and Love you have brought to us in him, Who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting.Dear Holy Innocents, beaten on the anvil of man's envy and cruelty, you were forged into mighty instruments in the hand of God. We look to you and beg for your prayers that we too may receive at his hand the grace to give our lives and withhold nothing, that his Love may reign in our hearts and throughout the world.
  December 28, Feast of the Holy Innocents
The feast of the Holy Innocents is an excellent time for parents to inaugurate the custom of blessing their children. From the Ritual comes the form which we use on solemn occasions, such as First Communion. But parents can simply sign a cross on the child's forehead with the right thumb dipped in holy water and say: May God bless you, and may He be the Guardian of your heart and mind—the Father, + Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
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 December 29, Fifth Day in the Octave of Christmas
St. Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury was assassinated in his cathedral on December 29, 1170 because of his opposition to his former friend, King Henry II of England, who was encroaching on the liberties of the English Church. Devotion to him spread like wildfire. He was enshrined in the hearts of men, and in their arts. In statues and stained glass, in song and story this good bishop was everywhere to be found: France, Italy, Spain, Sweden. Many miracles were attributed to his heavenly advocacy. — Excerpted from Days of the Lord
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Amen.
Holy Family:
This is actually important. (Duh!) Contemplation of the Holy Family was part of my re-evaluation in the middle of my life.
(Wish me luck, I’m going to try to keep this short, but I make no promises.)
(I) You don’t have to read John of Damascus to get that the Incarnation makes a kind of fissure through which holiness enters creation. These poor bodies of ours were created good. (Check my grammar!) I even like to imagine what an un-fallen tick would be like. Maybe they would hang from our ear lobes like jewels and their bite would heighten our perception of the loveliness all around.
But when the Holy spirit conceived our Lord in the womb of her who by that was shown to be the Panagia, Theotokos, the All Holy Mother of God, then human life, human sexuality, gestation, parturition, nursing, changing diapers, the whole deal was made holy.
Having read a very little in early 20th century books on child-rearing, what I sense is a certain shame about family. Children and domestic life are all very well, but all that belongs in the background, and one shouldn’t make too much of it.
Contrast this with what we learn from Scripture. Need I say more? Isn’t one aspect of the dark side of capitalism and industrialization precisely that it has tended to take fathers from their families and chain them to machines or to desks? Isn’t it generally conceded that a disastrous aspect of “The War on Poverty” was that it was far easier to get benefits if there wasn’t a husband around? Aren’t we still reeling from the social, and personal, consequences?
(II) The family, generally, in those cases, at least, where the wife is not the ever-virgin Mother of God, reflects the complementarity of sexuality. That in turn shows that our bodies are not, so to speak, freight or tare-weight but rather are part of what a human IS, and part of who we are as individuals. Even as the riotous hormones of my youth decrease, I am still stuck with being a guy. Yeah, I can change a diaper with the best of them and I appreciate the miraculous softness of a baby’s cheek. But I do so as a guy, a remember it and talk about it as a guy. I sin as a guy and I sacrifice as a guy.
I am particular, not general. So are you. My particularity and yours has been formed by the way we were made and in dynamic relationships — for me, with “old guys” (My father, teachers, coaches, trainers), guys like me (friends and teammates), and young guys (my little brother, kids I babysat for or taught swimming and sailing.) Not only can I not escape from the particularity of myself, it is only in a specific sense that I would even want to. Should I be given the grace to renounce myself and follow Christ, it will be a guy doing all that.
And mutatis mutandis for all of you as well.
As in point (I) above, we see around us a society struggling to affirm particularity only in trivial things but to deny it in general — under a notion, as the Pope says, that we are really only creatures of will and desire who can and ought to determine ourselves according to our whim, rather than discover ourselves according to the will of him who made us.
The Holy Family celebrates the sanctity of particularity: the way Mary shook out her hair when she awoke, Joseph groaning and stretching before he put on his sandals — these little things were made glorious because they were loved by God the Son of God.
He sets the solitary in families. So he invites us to holiness.
I will join you.
Forgive the absence...have been VERY involved with family gathering here at our home for several days. ;-)
I sincerely hope that the celebration of Christmas is continually blessed among you and yours! This goes for all who regularly post on/read this thread.
 December 30, Feast of the Holy Family
"The children must learn to see in their father the foster-father St. Joseph, and the Blessed Mother as the perfect model for their own mother. The lesson to be learned is both practical and theoretical, in that the children must learn how to obey and to love their parents in thought, word and action, just as Christ was obedient to Mary and Joseph. Helping mother in the kitchen and in the house work, and helping father in his odd jobs about the home thus take on a new significance by being performed in a Christ-like spirit." (True Christmas Spirit, ©1955, St. Meinrad Archabbey, Inc.)
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 December 31, Seventh Day in the Octave of Christmas
New Year's Eve, along with its innocent gaiety, is really a day for serious reflection. On the eve of the civil New Year the children may join their parents in a holy hour, in prayer and thanksgiving for the gifts and benefits which God has given them in the past year, and to pray for necessary graces in the forthcoming civil year.
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A happy new year to all of you.
 January 1, Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God
New Year's is a day of traditional hospitality, visiting and good cheer, mostly with a secular view, but there is no reason that this day, too, could not be sanctified in Christ.
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We might want to discuss a shared discipline to take us from January 13th (for Catholics, that's the end of official Christmastide this year) through Ash Wednesday.
I fear we may lose focus on being an ecumenical group dedicated to praying for the salvation of our country if we don't have a shared discipline.
Many of you may have read this upsetting story. I think the personal self-debasement of Ms. Griffin is distressing.
The kind of contempt she shows for herself, Mr. Cooper, and the audience suggests to me that we might focus our attention on prayers concerning human dignity.
I'm open to suggestions.
 January 2, St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory Nazianzen
The Orthodox Church has placed Basil and Gregory with John Chrysostom in the first rank of ecumenical doctors. They are "the three Hierarchs." — Excerpted from Magnificat, PO Box 91, Spencerville, MD © 2001
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 January 3, Most Holy Name of Jesus
A name of hope, because he that prays to the Eternal Father in the name of Jesus may hope for every grace he asks for: If you ask the Father anything in My name, He will give it you. A name of love. For the name of Jesus brings to our remembrance all the sufferings which Jesus has endured for us in his life and at his death. — Excerpted from St. Alphonsus de Liguori, The Incarnation Birth and Infancy of Jesus Christ
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 January 5, St. John Neumann
In 1840, John Neumann entered the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (Redemptorists). He labored in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland. In 1852, he was consecrated bishop of Philadelphia. There he worked hard for the establishment of parish schools and for the erection of many parishes for the numerous immigrants. Bishop Neumann died on January 5, 1860; he was beatified in 1963.
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 January 6, Solemnity of the Epiphany
The Church extends itself on Epiphany to the homes of the faithful. The custom of blessing the home on this day probably originated from these words in the Gospel, "And entering into the house, they found the Child with Mary, His Mother, and falling down they adored Him." The priest blesses the house if he can be present, but if not, the father of the family may do so.
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 January 7, St. Raymond of Penafort
For St. Raymond's feast we should remember that, "carolling and story telling belong to the whole Christmas season. Hospitality and giving to others also must continue if true Christmas joy is to remain. An outing to which friends are invited or a party that includes a round of carolling become perhaps even more appropriate with the approach of Epiphany." — Excerpted from The Twelve Days of Christmas
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The purest of Virgins gave us our God, who was this day born of her, clothed in the flesh of a Babe, and she was found worthy to feed him at her Breast: let us all adore Christ, who came to save us.
Saint Stephen is the first martyr of the Church, and is the patron of stonemasons, masons, bricklayers, deacons, headaches, and horses. His story comes from the Acts of the Apostles. He is usually pictured in deacon's vestments, holding the symbol of martyrdom, a palm branch. Sometimes he has a stone in his left hand, to indicate his death by stoning. He is depicted in many images wearing a wreath, which refers to the origin of his name, the Greek word Stephanos meaning "wreath." 
St. John was born in Bethsaida, and like his brother James, was a fisherman. He was called while mending his nets to follow Jesus. He became the beloved disciple of Jesus. He wrote the fourth Gospel, three Epistles and the Apocalypse. His passages on the pre-existence of the Word, who by His Incarnation became the light of the world and life of our souls, are among the finest of the New Testament. 
The Holy Innocents saved the Child Jesus from death by King Herod by the shedding of their own blood. The Holy Innocents are the special patrons of small children, who can please the Christ Child by being obedient and helpful to parents, and by sharing their toys and loving their siblings and playmates. 
Given the tempo of the liturgical season with its feasts it is easy to overlook that one saint who for many centuries was, after Mary and Joseph, the most venerated person in European Christendom. 
Today is the feast day of the Holy Family, but also every family's feast day, since the Holy Family is the patron and model of all Christian families. Today should be a huge family feast, since it is devoted entirely to the Holy Family as a model for the Christian family life. As Rev. Edward Sutfin states: 
The last day of the year is also the feast of St. Sylvester — bishop of Rome in 314. Constantine gave him the Lateran Palace, which became the cathedral church of Rome. Many legends exist about Sylvester. He supposedly cured Constantine from leprosy and later baptized him on his deathbed. 
In celebrating the feasts of St. Basil of Caesarea and St. Gregory Nazianzen on the same day, the Church extols a virtue which she has always esteemed, friendship. The friendship between Basil and Gregory was admirable. Born in Cappadocia around 330, they studied together in Athens and then returned to their homeland where they led a monastic life for several years. Their temperaments were very different. While Basil had the qualities of a leader and a gift for organization that made him a legislator for monks in the East, Gregory was a contemplative and a poet. 
The name of Jesus is a name of gladness, a name of hope and a name of love. A name of gladness, because if the remembrance of past transgressions afflicts us, this name comforts us, reminding us that the Son of God became man for this purpose, to make himself our Savior.
John Neumann was born in Bohemia on March 20, 1811. Since he had a great desire to dedicate himself to the American missions, he came to the United States as a cleric and was ordained in New York in 1836 by Bishop Dubois. 
Epiphany is a large celebration, especially in Spanish speaking countries. Things look different around the household: the infant Jesus in the manger now has a small gold crown and is wearing regal robes. The figures of the wise men have reached Bethlehem, completing the nativity scene. 
St. Raymond devoted much of his life to helping the poor. The famous incident which is recounted in the story of Raymond's life took place when he went with King James to Majorca. The King dismissed Raymond's request to return home. Relying on his faith and love of God, Raymond walked on the waves to his ship, spread his cloak to make a sail, made the sign of the cross then sailed to the distant harbor of Barcelona.