The month of May (Overview - Calendar) is the “month which the piety of the faithful has especially dedicated to Our Blessed Lady,” and it is the occasion for a “moving tribute of faith and love which Catholics in every part of the world [pay] to the Queen of Heaven. During this month Christians, both in church and in the privacy of the home, offer up to Mary from their hearts an especially fervent and loving homage of prayer and veneration. In this month, too, the benefits of God’s mercy come down to us from her throne in greater abundance” (Paul VI: Encyclical on theMonth of May, no. 1).
This Christian custom of dedicating the month of May to the Blessed Virgin arose at the end of the 13th century. In this way, the Church was able to Christianize the secular feasts which were wont to take place at that time. In the 16th century, books appeared and fostered this devotion.
The Blessed Virgin Mary is the Mother of the Church and therefore the example, as well as the guide and inspiration, of everyone who, in and through the Church, seeks to be the servant of God and man and the obedient agent of the promptings of the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit, as Pope Leo XIII reminded us, is the soul of the Church: All the activity and service of the members of the Church, beginning with the supreme participation of the Blessed Mother in the work of the Church, is vivified by the Holy Spirit as the body, in all its activities, is vivified by its soul. The Holy Spirit is the Paraclete, Advocate, and Comforter which Christ Himself sent to be our consolation in the sorrowful mysteries of life, our source of moderation in the joyful mysteries of life, our added principle of exaltation in the glorious mysteries of life.
So He was for the Blessed Mother; so also He is for the least of us; so also He is for the rest of the Church, even for those who are its unconscious but conscientious members.
Wherever there is faith there is the example of Mary, because she lived by faith as the Scriptures remind us….
If, then, piety is the virtue which binds us to the sources of all life, to God, to our parents, to the Church, to Christ, certainly Christian piety binds us, in grateful love, to Mary — or our acceptance of Christ and of the mystery of our kinship with Him is imperfect, partial, and unfulfilled.
It wasn’t reported until recently, but about a month ago Muslims attacked Christians at St. Mark Cathedral in Egypt after a funeral Mass. How dare Muslims show such utter disrespect during a most Holy occasion as a funeral Mass. The persecution and slaying of Christians breaks my heart. The worldwide Islamization and the intolerance, persecution, and killing of people who believe in other faiths by Muslims has got to stop. And Western governments thought Mubarek was bad? Now there is a president in Egypt, Morsi, who is apart of the Muslim Brotherhood. The attacks have progressively gotten worse. The U.S. government needs to stop giving Egypt aid of any kind, especially money. The West should not have messed in the internal affairs of Egypt’s government because now we have a much bigger mess on our hands. My prayers go out to all the Christians’ safety as they struggle while living in a hostile environment.
Coptic Christians attending a funeral service Sunday for four Copts killed two days earlier in an anti-Christian rampage were in turn attacked themselves by at least 200 Muslim rioters.
The incident, which started with a few dozen men pelting the mourners with stones, quickly escalated into a massive attack against Christians at St. Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in the Abbassia area of Cairo involving firearms, flash-bang grenades, tear gas, fire bombs and other improvised weapons, besides cars set ablaze.
A Morning Star News reporter observed that police took more than an hour to respond, and when they arrived, they did nothing to stop the attack. Instead, most stood and watched men throw rocks at the Christians gathered at the gates of the cathedral compound or hurl stones over walls at the Christians trapped inside.
Hundreds of Egyptian Christians were besieged inside Cairo’s Coptic cathedral last night after a mob, reportedly with the help of security forces, launched an attack on worshippers.
One person died and 84 were injured during the attack, which began after a funeral mass for five Copts who were killed in sectarian violence on Saturday, in which a Muslim man also died.
Wael Eskandar, an Egyptian blogger at the funeral, said he saw people being showered with broken bottles from the roof of a block of flats. After being attacked, he said, the people “started racing out of the side street and destroying the nearby cars”.
Peanut Gallery: The Vatican dares to tell it "like it was"... in this current climate of political correctness. I wonder what this will do for Christian / Muslim dialogue? Maybe interject some honesty? Or, is that too much to hope for? Time will tell.
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Teresa and I were watching ARGO, a movie we rented from Redbox on this special occasion, and as the movie dragged, time got away from us, and now it is officially the next day. But how can I not put up the post that wished her a happy birthday and lets our readers know this special occasion. So we have decided to extend her birthday into tomorrow. We turned off the movie and will watch the rest tomorrow, and we will save the blowing out of the candles for tomorrow as well.
Teresa is a wonderful woman, the most wonderful woman I know. I know her readers here love her, and will appreciate the extended opportunity to wish her a happy birthday.
I love her like crazy.
She had the option of going out to dinner, but she preferred to use one of her birthday gifts tonight to cook. Can you believe that! How awesome is that?
We had delicious tortillas! It felt like it was MY birthday!
But then again, for the ten (approaching eleven) years we have been married, she has made me happy everyday as if it were my birthday.
If this were a just world, it would be possible for me to make her as happy on her birthday as she makes me every day.
“Saint Joseph is a man of great spirit. He is great in faith, not because he speaks his own words, but above all because he listens to the words of the Living God. He listens in silence. And his heart ceaselessly perseveres in the readiness to accept the Truth contained in the word of the Living God,” Pope John Paul II had once said.
There is very little about the life of Joseph in Scripture but still, we know that he was the chaste husband of Mary, the foster father of Jesus, a carpenter and a man who was not wealthy. We also know that he came from the royal lineage of King David.
We can see from his actions in scripture that Joseph was a compassionate man, and obedient to the will of God. He also loved Mary and Jesus and wanted to protect and provide for them.
The feast of St. Joseph the Worker was established by Pope Pius XII in 1955 in order to Christianize the concept of labor and give to all workmen a model and a protector. By the daily labor in his shop, offered to God with patience and joy, St. Joseph provided for the necessities of his holy spouse and of the Incarnate Son of God, and thus became an example to all laborers. “Workmen and all those laboring in conditions of poverty will have reasons to rejoice rather than grieve, since they have in common with the Holy Family daily preoccupations and cares”(Leo XIII).
Here is a sermon on Pope Pius XII’s institution of St. Joseph the Worker’s feast day on May 1.
I watched the Youtube videos and read the articles of Susan Griffiths' final week of life with a mixture of sadness, discouragement and anger. Susan Griffiths was the Canadian woman from Winnipeg, Manitoba who committed assisted suicide at the Dignitas Clinic in Switzerland on April 25, 2013.
She was in the early stages of Multiple Systems Atrophy, a rare condition of the involuntary nervous system.
Only God the author of all life has the right to decide when a person is going to die. Euthanasia/assisted suicide is a selfish act of taking the easy way out. It is not an act of bravery. No one should be cheerleaders for death. This is the work of the devil. People who think taking your own life is a good thing are sick. There is so much moral bankruptcy in our society that it is disheartening. We need to pray, rely on God and be more proactive in showing persons with major illnesses that they are loved by Christ and how fulfilling it is to unite your suffering with Jesus' Cross.
Saint Faustina in her Diary described hearing Jesus say that He would leave the house because there were things that displeased Him. Faustina had a vision where she saw the Host coming out of the tabernacle and landed in her hand. The, she placed the Host back in the tabernacle. This happened two more times her describing the third time how the Host transformed into the living Lord Jesus. Jesus said “I will stay here no longer!” A powerful love rose up in Faustina’s soul and she said to Jesus that she wouldn’t let Jesus leave this house. Jesus disappeared. Faustina put the Host back into the tabernacle. Jesus stayed there and Saint Faustina did three days of adoration for the reparation of sins.
To be honest I’m not feeling the greatest today and am having a hard time thinking so please bear with my scattered thoughts.
I find it surprising that St. Faustina would hear Jesus say that He would leave a place because of there having been things that displeased Him. Wouldn’t He stay there to try to guide persons to change that which displeased Him? Jesus doesn’t give us any clues as to what displeased our Lord. Was it something St. Faustina and the other Sisters did or failed to do? Could that have been an empty threat to wake up St. Faustina, that Jesus never really intended to leave the house? It just baffles my mind that since a few in His flock had gone astray, going by Jesus’ words, why would He have left them?
The imagery of what St. Faustina visioned has me wondering what we could have seen if a camera had been there to take pictures. Would we have seen Jesus? Or an outline of Him? There have been witnesses that have seen outlines and figures of ghosts so I don’t think it is far-fetched to think and hope that we could have seen our Lord in a photo. I have seen different pictures depicting our Lord but do you have an image in your mind of what you think Jesus looks like?
In “Song of the Sparrow” Fr. Bodo talks about the love of God and how many people find it hard to believe that they are loved and lovable. Yet God sent His only Son to die for us in the ultimate act of love. An unbelievable act of love. Since Jesus died on the Cross for each of us in an unbelievable act of love is it so It seems logical to me that the weak persons of little faith have trouble believing the “unbelievable.” It takes great faith to believe the “unbelievable” so we should encourage those of little faith and try to understand why the person has trouble believing certain things. I would ask, why wouldn’t God love us this much? Why do you doubt that God would have sent His only Son to die that we may be saved? God loves us and is waiting for each of us to know, feel, and show Him love in return. God is Love.
