Posted on 04/03/2013 5:58:41 AM PDT by NYer
.- The Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration are thrilled at the approved beatification of their German founder, Mother Maria Theresia Bonzel, after a Vatican-recognized miracle in Colorado.
“We are enthusiastically surprised,” Sister Clarice Gentrup, the congregation's vicar general, told CNA April 2.
“After all these years, we’re coming closer and closer to beatification and canonization, possibly.”
Pope Francis approved the 19th century nun's beatification on March 27. The ceremony will be celebrated at the Catholic cathedral in Paderborn, Germany on Nov. 10 and her hometown of Olpe will host an event on Nov. 11.
The miracle attributed to Mother Maria Theresia involves the healing of a Colorado Springs boy named Luke Burgie. In September 1998, at the age of four, he began suffering chronic diarrhea. Many doctors and specialists could not cure him.
“Nobody could really diagnose what the cause of it was,” Sr. Gentrup said. “They tried to heal him, but nothing helped. He was losing weight, and a little four-year-old doesn’t have a lot of weight to lose.”
Luke's older sister Jill met some Sisters of St. Francis when they visited her parish elementary school, where she was a student. Her family invited two sisters to supper at their home, where they learned about Luke’s illness. The sisters began a novena to Mother Maria Theresia for Luke in late January 1999.
Luke was suddenly cured on Feb. 22, 1999, without scientific explanation.
His mother said that he “just got up from the couch and began playing like a normal happy kid,” the Sisters of St. Francis reported on their website. At the time, Luke simply said “Jesus healed me.”
Sr. Gentrup, who lives in Colorado Springs, said the boy is doing well fourteen years later.
“He was a healthy strong, wrestler in high school. He rides his bicycle and runs marathons,” Sr. Gentrup said. “He’s a normal, healthy teenager.”
She and her other Sisters of St. Francis are glad to see recognition of their foundress.
“Right now we’re very grateful she will be beatified. She was such a wonderful woman and such an inspiration to so many, many, many sisters.”
Mother Maria Theresia was born in Olpe in the German region of Westphalia on Sept. 17, 1830. She founded the Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration in Olpe in 1863.
Her sisters cared for orphans, worked in teaching, and provided health care among many other acts of charity. They suffered under the “Kulturkampf,” the nineteenth-century German government’s program against the Catholic Church.
“She lived in some very difficult times in Germany,” Sr. Gentrup said.
Many laws and regulations tried to suppress religious work. Government officials said Mother Maria Theresia could not take care of orphans and they had to be placed in homes. One day a government officer came to her door and objected that she was still caring for orphans.
“She called all the orphans together and said 'officer, here they are, they’re yours,'” Sr. Gentrup recounted. “And he said, 'okay, we’ll give you a few more months to place them in homes.'”
“That’s the kind of determination Mother Maria Theresia had.”
She died on Feb. 6, 1905, at which time about 1,500 sisters were members of her congregation. Her sisters now minister in Germany, the U.S., the Philippines and Brazil.
Sr. Gentrup said Mother Maria Theresia had “a deep, deep faith in God and in Jesus, the Risen Christ.” Her devotion especially focused on the Blessed Sacrament.
“She always wanted a sister in the church or in the chapel, always praying for her work and for the work of everybody in the world, to move the whole world closer to the reign of God here on earth.”
The Sisters of Perpetual Adoration foundress wanted her congregation to “balance works of mercy with prayer.
Mother Maria Theresia’s advance towards beatification also drew comment from Bishop Michael Sheridan of Colorado Springs
“I share the joy of our Franciscan sisters that their foundress Mother Bonzel will be beatified. It’s wonderful to know that she has been so close to us in her intercessory prayer,” Bishop Sheridan said April 2.
After she is beatified, Mother Maria Theresia will need one more recognized miracle to advance towards official sainthood.
Ping!
I saw what you did there. Real classy.
Use your intellect and see that some people, like Mother Theresa, actually cared for the poor, sick and dying with her own hands.
She also believed that good does come from suffering, but never wished anyone to suffer. That’s why she was there, helping whom? The suffering. Look up salvific suffering.
Thank you.
I’m no fan of Christopher Hitchins (to put it mildly) but he’s exposed that woman pretty well. I really put only one human being that ever lived on a pedastal. That would be Jesus the Christ.
I’m a huge fan of C. S. Lewis, but I still see him as just a flawed man, as I see all men. It gives me the creeps when people deify or “virtually” deify any other human being.
And I don’t expect you to get past the language of that video, it’s repulsive and I would never expose my children to it, but the message is clear and real, and they summarize the situation very well for those that don’t have the time or inclination to read up on her actual deeds.
APRIL 2, 2013
OUR LADY’S message
to MIRJANA SOLDO (Medjugorie)
for the ENTIRE WORLD!
“Dear children; I am calling you to be one with my Son in spirit. I am calling you, through prayer, and the Holy Mass when my Son unites Himself with you in a special way, to try to be like Him; that, like Him, you may always be ready to carry out God’s will and not seek the fulfillment of your own. Because, my children, it is according to God’s will that you are and that you exist, and without God’s will you are nothing.
As a mother I am asking you to speak about the glory of God with your life, because in that way you will also glorify yourself in accordance to His will. Show humility and love for your neighbour to everyone. Through such humility and love, my Son saved you and opened the way for you to the Heavenly Father.
I implore you to keep opening the way to the Heavenly Father for all those who have not come to know Him and have not opened their hearts to His love. By your life, open the way to all those who still wander in search of the truth.
My children, be my apostles who have not lived in vain. Do not forget that you will come before the Heavenly Father and tell Him about yourself. Be ready! Again I am warning you, pray for those whom my Son called, whose hands He blessed and whom He gave as a gift to you. Pray, pray, pray for your shepherds. Thank you.”
No problem with seeing people for being people. The last perfect man died and rose again 2000 years ago.
However, when you look at what she actually did, you will see that for decades, she took in and cared for people who an entire country (India) turned their back on.
People who would have died alone, in a gutter, were brought in, given personal attention, and cared for. Sure they died, but at least somebody showed them love.
Mother Theresa lived the Gospel everyday. She ministered to the poor, the hungry, the sick, the lame, the widow and the orphan.
What else do you want!?!
Balderdash.
“It gives me the creeps when people deify or “virtually” deify any other human being.”
Stop playing video games then.
Saints are creatures like ourselves who lived Christ well as we are all called to do. Nothing more and nothing less.
Defaming Mother Teresa was Hitchins raison d’etre. I wonder how many people he placed in his bedrooms so they could die between sheets rather than under a bridge somewhere.
Saints are creatures like ourselves who lived Christ well as we are all called to do. Nothing more and nothing less.
So, you will have no problem noting exemplary ones after all.
I certainly couldn’t fill Blessed Teresa’s shoes, nor could even approach the martyrs who we call saints.
I’d have to have either a narcissistic bent or a huge ego to claim I live according to their lives in Christ.
I do the best I can with the Grace I’m given but I’ve never considered tarring those who fulfill the Lord’s Words better because of unacknowledged jealousy or some disguised Pride.
I’d have to have either a narcissistic bent or a huge ego to claim I live according to their lives in Christ.
However, the bible clearly teaches us not to be “respectors of men”. I don’t know what lurks in the hearts of other men but, being a man, I know the heart of men. I see all Christians as equal.
“I don’t know what lurks in the hearts of other men but, being a man, I know the heart of men. I see all Christians as equal.”
I can only know my own heart and even that is suspect. We are fallen and because we are fallen we cannot see ourselves as God sees us.
“I see all Christians as equal.”
All Christians are equal to what?
“I see all Christians as equal.”
All Christians are equal to what?
Acts 10:34
Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons:
We have all sinned and fall short of the glory of god.
None is righteous. No not one.
etc....
I can only know my own heart and even that is suspect
And part of the power of Jesus’ life is that he was fully man. It means he had the same temptations that are common to all men - and he triumphed until death.
And you and I have the same temptations that are common to all men, but we have been significantly less successful. In my case I know. In your case I presume it to be so.
“We have all sinned and fall short of the glory of god.”
I don’t know any Christian who denies that. If one denies their fallen nature, they aren’t Christian.
But, you posted, “I see all Christians as equal.”
I ask, equal to what? Each other? Not according to Paul, and not according to Hebrews.
He said to mark them and emulate.
Brethren, join in imitating me, and mark those who so live as you have an example in us. Phil. 3 17
I urge you, then, be imitators of me. 1 Cor 4 16
For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us; we were not idle when we were with you, we did not eat anyone’s bread without paying but with toil and labor we worked night and day that we might not burden any of you. It was not because we have not that right, but to give you in our conduct an example to imitate. 2 Thes 3 7-9
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Wrong Mother Teresa. The article was about Mother Maria Theresia, who was born in 1830, not Mother Teresa of Calcutta, the one Hitchens bashed.
You were so eager to crap on this thread you didn't even read the article.
Medjugorie is a hoax.
-— His mother said that he “just got up from the couch and began playing like a normal happy kid,” the Sisters of St. Francis reported on their website. At the time, Luke simply said “Jesus healed me.” -—
That gave me a chill.
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