FIRST FRIDAY-GERMAN
AMERICAN DAY
Psalm 112, Verse 1
Hallelujah! Blessed the man who fears
the LORD, who greatly delights in his commands.
This psalm is detailing
the blessings received by those who remain close to God by obedience to the
commandments. Among their blessings are children, wealth that enables them to
be magnanimous, and virtue by which they encourage others. The just person is
an affront to the wicked, whose hopes remain unfulfilled.[1]
Hallelujah
is a conjunction of two Hebrew words which mean “Praise the Lord”. Yes, praise
God for men who have Holy fear and follow his commands for such person’s help
to create a Kingdom of Heaven on earth. Hallelujah! If you know such people
follow and emulate them.
First Friday-Sacred
Heart of Jesus[2]
ALTHOUGH many pious
souls had been accustomed, in the silence of their secluded lives, to venerate
the sacred Heart of Jesus with great devotion, still our divine Savior desired
that the boundless love of His Heart might be known by all men, and that a new
fire of love should thereby be kindled in the cold hearts of Christians. For
this purpose He made use of a frail and little-known instrument in the person
of Margaret Mary Alacoque, a nun of the Order of the Visitation, at Parayle-Monial,
France. One day, when, according to her custom during the octave of Corpus
Christi, she was deeply engaged in devotions before the Blessed Sacrament, the
divine Savior appeared to her, showed her His Heart burning with love, and
said: “Behold this Heart, which has so loved men that it has spared nothing,
even to exhausting and consuming itself, in order to testify its love. In
return I receive from the greater part only ingratitude, by their irreverence
and sacrilege, and by the coldness and contempt they have for Me in this
sacrament of love. And what is most painful to Me is that they are hearts
consecrated to Me. It is for this reason I ask thee that the first Friday after
the octave of Corpus Christi be appropriated to a special feast to honor My Heart
by communicating on that day and making reparation for the indignity that it
has received. And I promise that My Heart shall dilate to pour out abundantly
the influences of its love on all that will render it this honor or procure its
being rendered. Margaret obeyed, but met everywhere the greatest opposition,
until finally, when she became mistress of novices, she succeeded, by the help
of her divine Spouse, in animating her young charges to venerate the sacred
Heart of Jesus. But this was not sufficient for her zeal. She persevered until
she softened the opposition of the nuns, and kindled in all an equal devotion towards
the most sacred Heart. Thence the devotion spread to the adjoining dioceses,
where confraternities in honor of the most sacred Heart of Jesus soon sprung
up. Pope Clement XIII., after having instituted a most rigorous examination of
the whole affair, commanded that the feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus
should be solemnly celebrated throughout the whole Catholic Church every year,
on the first Friday after the octave of Corpus Christi.
The Devotion to the Sacred Heart
of Jesus
Object of this
Devotion
In the divine Heart of
Our Savior we must not imagine an inanimate heart, separated from the person of
Christ, but the living heart of the God-Man, the center of all His affections,
the fountain of all His virtues, the most touching emblem of His infinite love
to man. The Church venerates the cross, the blood, and the wounds of the divine
Savior, by feasts which have their proper masses and lessons, in order, by
meditation upon these objects, to awaken in us a more fervent devotion to the Redeemer.
How much more worthy, then, of our devotion is the sacred Heart of Our Savior,
since all its thoughts, movements, and affections aim at our salvation, and it
is always ready to receive truly penitent sinners, to pardon them, to restore
them again to God s favor, and make them partakers of eternal happiness!
Excellence of this Devotion
It is, writes the
venerable P. Simon Gourdan:
·
A holy devotion, for therein men venerate in
Christ those affections and motions of His Heart by which He sanctified the Church,
glorified His Heavenly Father, and showed Himself to men as a perfect example
of the most sublime holiness.
·
An ancient devotion of the Catholic Church,
which, instructed by St. Paul, the great apostle, has at all times acknowledged
the great beneficence of the divine and sacred Heart of Jesus.
·
An approved devotion, for the Holy Scriptures
everywhere admonish us to renew the heart, by changing our lives; to penetrate
it with true sorrow, to inflame it with divine love, and to adorn it by the
practice of all virtues. When, therefore, a new heart is promised us, by which
to direct our lives, that can be no other than the Heart of Jesus, which is to
us the pattern of all excellence, and which we must follow if we would be saved.
·
A perfect devotion, as being the origin of all
other devotions. For the Heart of Jesus is the inexhaustible treasury from
which the blessed Mother of God, and all other saints have derived their
graces, their virtues, their life, their spiritual goods. Filled first with
treasures from this source, different servants of God have instituted and
established other devotions.
·
A profitable devotion, for thereby we have brought
before our eyes the very fountain of life and grace, and can draw directly from
it, increasing in ourselves all virtues, by adoring this divine Heart,
meditating on its holy affections, and endeavoring to imitate them.
·
A devotion pleasing to God, for thus we adore
God, as Christ requires, in spirit and in truth, serving Him inwardly in our
hearts, and endeavoring to please Him. Finally it is:
·
A useful devotion, since its whole object is to
unite us most intimately with Christ as members of Him, her head, to make us
live by and according to His spirit, to have one heart and soul with Him, and
through grace finally to become one with Him, which is and must be the object
of all devotions.
As this devotion is,
then, so excellent, we cannot sufficiently recommend it to all who are anxious
for their salvation. While everyone can practice this devotion, and adore the
sacred Heart of Jesus, by himself, there is a greater blessing when pious souls
unite and form a confraternity for practicing the devotion. Of such
confraternities there were in the year 1726 more than three hundred, and they
are now established throughout all Catholic countries. Hesitate not, Christian
soul, to engage in this devotion, and to join in the adoration of that sacred
Heart of Jesus in which all men find propitiation, the pious, confidence;
sinners, hope; the afflicted, consolation; the sick, support; the dying, refuge;
the elect, joy and delight.
An Offering to the Most Sacred
Heart of Jesus
Whoever says the
following prayer before the image of the most sacred Heart of Jesus, with
sincere sorrow for his sins, gains each time an indulgence of one hundred days;
and by saying it daily for a month, he can on any one day gain a plenary indulgence,
if he makes his confession, receives communion, and prays according to the
intention of the Church:
“My
loving Jesus, I (N.N.) give Thee my heart; and I consecrate myself wholly to
Thee, out of the grateful love I bear Thee, and as reparation for all my
unfaithfulness; and with Thy aid I purpose never to sin again.”
A Visit with
Jacob[3]
Genesis 37:3-4
“Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his sons, because he was the
son of his old age. And he made him a robe of many colors. But when his
brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated
him and could not speak peacefully to him.”
Israel is Jacob. God later changed Jacob’s name
to Israel and was no longer seen as a supplanter or deceiver, but as one which
“God prevails,” which is what the Hebrew word “Yisra’el” means. The prophets
sometime use Jacob’s name when they are writing about Israel (Isaiah 41:14).
Never
give up on someone they may be a Jacob with an Israel waiting inside them.
German-American Day[4]
German-American Day celebrates German culture and
heritage in the United States. This holiday also serves to remember 13 German
families from Krefeld, Germany that fled religious oppression in Germany. On
October 6th, 1683, these families established Germantown, Pennsylvania, the
first distinctly German-American settlement. In the centuries that followed,
more than seven million more German-speaking immigrants arrived on the shores
of the US and as of 2010, over 20% of the US population claims German ancestry.
In 1983, on the 300th anniversary of Germantown, President Ronald Reagan
declared October 6th as German-American Day. President Reagan officially
declared German-American Day four years later in 1987. Today, German-American
Day, a celebration of German culture, identity and heritage, is celebrated
annually on October 6th.
German-American
Day Facts & Quotes
·
The current population of Germantown, PA is
26,563 inhabitants.
·
Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South
Dakota, Nebraska, and Iowa are now home to the largest number of German
descendants in the US.
·
After the Second World War, around 375,000
Germans immigrated to the US. In the 50s and 60s alone, around 786,000 Germans
immigrated to the US.
·
Albert Einstein was a German immigrant, a Jew
who opted to remain in the US when the Nazi party came to power in 1933.
·
The world
will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without
doing anything. - Albert Einstein
German-American
Day Top Events and Things to Do
·
Read some popular stories by German writers
including Hansel and Gretel, The Trial and The Man Without
Qualities.
·
Spend some time learning more about the
religious oppression in Germany in 1683 in order to further understand why the
founding 13 families fled the country and arrived in Philadelphia.
·
Enjoy a glass of mulled wine. It is a common
drink found at Christmas markets all through Germany.
·
Enjoy a German movie. Some of our favorites: Victoria
(2015), Land of Mine (2015) and Downfall (2004).
·
Learn more about the Nazi Regime from WW2 in
order to better understand how the population of German-Americans grew so
quickly around that time.
Fitness Friday[5]
Recognizing that God the
Father created man on Friday the 6th day I propose in this blog to
have an entry that shares on how to recreate and renew yourself in strength;
mind, soul and heart.
German
Volume Training
It's brutally hard, but I've
found it to be an effective way to pack on muscle fast! In strength-coaching
circles, this method is often called the Ten Sets Method. Supersets and trisets
allow you to perform a lot of work in a short period of time. The rest-pause
method allows you to use heavier weights, so you can recruit the higher
threshold muscle fibers, and eccentric training enables you to overcome
strength plateaus. The bottom line is that almost any training method will
work—provided you do it with intensity—at least for the few weeks it takes for
your body to adapt to it. There is, however, one training system that stands
above all the rest. It's brutally hard, but I've found it to be a very
effective way to pack on muscle fast! In strength-coaching circles, this method
is often called the Ten Sets Method. Because it has its roots in
German-speaking countries, I like to call it German Volume Training. To the
best of my knowledge, this training system originated in Germany in the
mid-'70s and was popularized by Rolf Feser, who was then the National Coach of
Weightlifting. A similar protocol was promoted by Vince Gironda in the U.S.,
but regardless of who actually invented it, it works. In Germany, the Ten Sets
Method was used in the off-season to help weightlifters gain lean body mass. It
was so efficient that lifters routinely moved up a full weight class within 12
weeks. It was the base program of Canadian weightlifter Jacques Demers, Silver
Medallist in the Los Angeles Olympic Games. Jacques was known in weightlifting
circles for his massive thighs, and he gives credit to the German method for
achieving such a spectacular level of hypertrophy. The same method was also
used by Bev Francis in her early days of bodybuilding to pack on muscle.
The program works because it targets a group of motor units, exposing them
to an extensive volume of repeated efforts, specifically, 10 sets of a single
exercise. The body adapts to the extraordinary stress by hypertrophying the
targeted fibers. To say this program adds muscle fast is probably an
understatement. Gains of 10 pounds or more in six weeks are not uncommon, even
in experienced lifters!
Goals
& Guidelines
The goal of the German Volume Training method is to complete ten sets of ten
reps with the same weight for each exercise. You want to begin with a weight
you could lift for 20 reps to failure if you had to. For most people, on most
exercises, that would represent 60% of their 1RM load. Therefore, if you can
bench press 300 pounds for 1 rep, you would use 180 pounds for this exercise.For lifters new to this method, I recommend using the following body-part splits:
Body-Part Splits
- Day 1: Chest & Back
- Day 2: Legs &
Abs
- Day 3: Off
- Day 4: Arms &
Shoulders
- Day 5: Off
Daily Devotions/Prayers
·
Total
Consecration Day 26
·
Fast
till evening then enjoy German
meat balls with sour cream[6].
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