Posted on 01/14/2013 9:41:31 AM PST by Mad Dawg
Back in September I took the liberty of starting a thread inviting all to pray for the election.
Well, that didn't work out so well, maybe.
But I am am still 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.
["Perpetual Novena" just means we mean to keep on praying in a committed and regular way until something happens.]
...for I have heard a decree of destruction from the Lord GOD of hosts upon the whole land.
_______________________________
Many have heard this....and not in a horribly negative way. Rather, this is the MERCY of God working to bring the hearts of His creation back to HIM...that they might LIVE!
The darkness will grow darker before this is all over...and HE will light our way.
Praise God. I believe that is His way.
First D-Day and the race across France. THEN the Ardennes and the Battle of the Bulge, and only THEN do we take Germany.
Our enemy is fighting hard. The friars here decided to cancel our bus to the March for Life because of the weather.
One of the good things Luther said: One little word will fell him.
Live in thy blood. ... and thou didst increase and grow great, and advancedst, and camest to woman's ornament: thy breasts were fashioned, and thy hair grew: and thou wast naked, and full of confusion. ... trusting in thy beauty, thou playedst the harlot because of thy renown, and thou hast prostituted thyself to every passenger, to be his. (Ezeckiel 16)
A skilled woman.
This seemed so very appropriate this morning (Canticle from Daniel):
But we, Lord, are made the least of all nations.
Today we are brought low over all the earth
on account of our sins.
Today there is no prince
no prophet, no leader,
no holocaust, no sacrifice.
No offering, no incense,
no first-fruits offered to you
– no way to obtain your mercy.
But in our contrite souls,
in a spirit of humility,
accept us, Lord.
Like a holocaust of rams and bulls,
like fat sheep in their thousands,
let our sacrifice be like these before you today.
Bring to fruition the quest of those who follow you,
for those who trust in you can never be confounded.
And now we follow you with all our heart
and we revere you and seek your face.
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
world without end.
Amen.
AMEN!
And maybe there will be a third great awakening for this country.
&&
I pray for this often. See my tagline.
Wait! It’s enough that I can type at all. You mean I have to be coherent too?
:-)
Okay. THIS is long. It's excerpted from a letter to a visionary.
To my non-Catholic friends. First, please be assured of my love and admiration. Then understand, please, that "I paint what I see," and I am -- decidedly if not obnoxiously -- a Catholic Christian. If what I write is helpful, so much the better. If not, pray to God for me that he may amend me.
==============
+++
Praised be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all consolation!
He comforts us in all our afflictions and thus enables us to comfort those who are in trouble, with the same consolation we have received from him.
As we have shared much in the sufferings of Christ, so through Christ do we share abundantly in his consolation.
-- 2 Corinthians 1:3-5( The repellent NAB translation)
+++
Today we commemorate Paul Miki "and companions." They were crucified in 1597 century Japan because they were Christians.
One of the delights of reading Paul is the sense that one is seeing the beginning of Christian thought. Paul is putting words to the mystery of the God who suffers and dies.
Many in the Bible and elsewhere were "brought back" from death. In the Resurrection, the "Anastasis" (from which comes the lovely name "Anastasia") we see for the first time that death is now a way station, a stop on the way forward. There is no "bringing back." There is a newness, something not seen before.
And the baptized (this is not exclusive; we trust a loving God to deal mercifully with the unbaptized) are mystically incorporated into Christ's suffering, dying, being dead, and rising.
This is about your pain viewed in the scheme of a life incorporated into Christ's.
Worshippers of the suffering God cannot reasonably offer refuge from suffering. We cannot say, "follow Christ," and hold out anything else than his tears of mourning at the death of Lazarus or his scourging, humiliation, and crucifixion. One of the obscene perversions of what we preach is the version that says, "Do right and behave yourself, and things will go well for you." And another related perversion is that, in a heaven which is presented as either as an insipid pastoral scene or an unbelievably long church service, you will be rewarded for being a good little girl.
No. We hold out what the Greeks call "divinization." You are offered the highest sort of godliness available to anything that isn't its own origin. If we could see one another as God intends us to be, we would be tempted to fall down in worship.
But the trail has been clearly blazed. The "Way" passes through the Via Dolorosa and up the hill outside Jerusalem -- or Nagasaki, or thousands of other such hills since God became a man. Do not mistake! It does not STOP there. But it passes through there.
Along the way there are comforts and consolations, not in the soft sense, but in the stern sense of, say, the strength to observe and accept the pain as it courses though body and soul, and to offer that all for the purposes of God and the service of one another.
And so we come to Paul's opening doxology in Second Corinthians. We have been given the astonishing gift of being able to bring strength and peace to others. Who, seeing this gift, would not desire it? What joy can compare with bearing joy to others?
Yes, it is not so far wrong to see the pain of our lives as the random sadism of the angels who preferred illusory domination in chaos to true power in the Order of Love. And we cannot deny that at times we have preferred wild chaos to chaste beauty.
But the gift (or a part of it) is this: Even if the origin of our sorrows is found somewhere in an inexplicable preference of rebellious tohu-bohu before beauty, light, justice, mercy, and love, still those same sorrows, offered in love for sanctification, are the very tools with which we strengthen others with the strength to pass through a sea more threatening than that which barred the way between slavery and freedom for our fathers.
It may be that all we see and feel is weak knees, stooped shoulders, faltering steps. It is certain though, that clearer vision sees wings as much greater than the wings of eagles as eagles are greater than toads. You yourself may see this when you look in the eyes of those you serve.
Awesome, MD!
I happened to read this from the Office of Readings earlier this morning:
From an account of the martyrdom of Saint Paul Miki and his companions, by a contemporary writer
You shall be my witnesses
The crosses were set in place. Father Pasio and Father Rodriguez took turns encouraging the victims. Their steadfast behaviour was wonderful to see. The Father Bursar stood motionless, his eyes turned heavenward. Brother Martin gave thanks to God’s goodness by singing psalms. Again and again he repeated: “Into your hands, Lord, I entrust my life.” Brother Francis Branco also thanked God in a loud voice. Brother Gonsalvo in a very loud voice kept saying the Our Father and Hail Mary.
Our brother, Paul Miki, saw himself standing now in the noblest pulpit he had ever filled. To his “congregation” he began by proclaiming himself a Japanese and a Jesuit. He was dying for the Gospel he preached. He gave thanks to God for this wonderful blessing and he ended his “sermon” with these words: “As I come to this supreme moment of my life, I am sure none of you would suppose I want to deceive you. And so I tell you plainly: there is no way to be saved except the Christian way. My religion teaches me to pardon my enemies and all who have offended me. I do gladly pardon the Emperor and all who have sought my death. I beg them to seek baptism and be Christians themselves.”
Then he looked at his comrades and began to encourage them in their final struggle. Joy glowed in all their faces, and in Louis’ most of all. When a Christian in the crowd cried out to him that he would soon be in heaven, his hands, his whole body strained upward with such joy that every eye was fixed on him.
Anthony, hanging at Louis’ side, looked toward heaven and called upon the holy names – “Jesus, Mary!” He began to sing a psalm: “Praise the Lord, you children!” (He learned it in catechism class in Nagasaki. They take care there to teach the children some psalms to help them learn their catechism).
Others kept repeating “Jesus, Mary!” Their faces were serene. Some of them even took to urging the people standing by to live worthy Christian lives. In these and other ways they showed their readiness to die.
Then, according to Japanese custom, the four executioners began to unsheathe their spears. At this dreadful sight, all the Christians cried out, “Jesus, Mary!” And the storm of anguished weeping then rose to batter the very skies. The executioners killed them one by one. One thrust of the spear, then a second blow. It was over in a very short time.
Thank you for that wonderful prayer! Daily offerings on the way.
The mercy — well, one of them — God shows to depressed insomniacs is that when we awake for no reason in the middle of the night, we can always pray Matins!
That was an amazing and harrowing reading.
Yep...it was both amazing and harrowing. We need to remember that God, our Father, will always “give us the ticket” if we need to take that train (as told to Corrie Ten Boom by her own father).
;-)
he that taketh not up his cross, and followeth me, is not worthy of me(Matthew 10:38)
Observe, Gentle Freeper: the unworthy here are those who do follow Christ, unless they take up their crosses. And how will they take one up if they don't look for it?
That’s the way the author wrote the prayer.
FR needs a ‘Like’ button.
In case you are not already aware, I wanted to alert you and others interested, to this organization’s effort to give 1 million Rosaries for the unborn on May 3-5, 2013:
http://www.saintmichaelthearchangelorganization.org/
Thank you.
I have been dealing with some health problems and haven’t had the energy to deal with this page as well. I’m sorry.
And I’m very grateful that you thought of the page and of me.
Oh my goodness!
When we have our hands full with that type of challenge, it DOES require our full focus and attention!
I was watching TBN today, and a gal on there (Billy Brim with Gloria Copeland) was telling of how she had a wart for 2-3 years and one day she got the insight that it was the molehill trying to become the mountain, and that with that faith as mustard seed, believing, she could tell it, whenever her attention was placed on it, that it is the molehill and will be cast into the sea. Sure enough several months later, she looked down and the molehill of the wart had indeed been healed, or “cast into the sea.”
According to the will of God, may your challenge be as the molehill, and in full faith believing and agreeing together do we tell that health concern to now cast itself into the sea! Glory to God in His name!
I throw no bricks at anyone if they are unable to maintain a thread on FreeRepublic - especially prayer threads. They are often totally labors of love and should be regarded as gifts of opportunity both to the one who keeps the threads going, as well as to the people who participate on the threads. Sometimes they are sustained only for cycles of time.
The Archangel Michael page is, I think a valiant effort to provide our Mother Mary with a significant offering. I was hoping that you might consider exercising your ping list to let people know about it, but only if you feel called to do so. Also, it is my understanding that there might be a Catholic ping list. If so, could you direct me to that, so I may share this link with them also, in case they do not have awareness of it. Thanks!
Blessings
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