Wednesday, May 15, 2024

 Third Wednesday; First Mickey

Pentecost Novena Praying for a  "Supernatural Revival In Our Land"

SIXTH DAY (Wednesday, 7th Week of Easter) If Thou take Thy grace away, nothing pure in man will stay, All his good is turn'd to ill. Special Intention For a Holy Spirit filled “Supernatural Revival” in our land. The Gift of Understanding Understanding, as a gift of the Holy Spirit, helps us to grasp the meaning of the truths of our holy religion. By faith we know them, but by Understanding we learn to appreciate and relish them. It enables us to penetrate the inner meaning of revealed truths and through them to be quickened to newness of life. Our faith ceases to be sterile and inactive, but inspires a mode of life that bears eloquent testimony to the faith that is in us; we begin to "walk worthy of God in all things pleasing, and increasing in the knowledge of God." Prayer Come, O Spirit of Understanding, and enlighten our minds, that we may know and believe all the mysteries of salvation; and may merit at last to see the eternal light in Thy Light; and in the light of glory to have a clear vision of Thee and the Father and the Son. Amen. Our Father and Hail Mary ONCE. Glory be to the Father SEVEN TIMES.  ACT OF CONSECRATION TO THE HOLY SPIRIT On my knees I before the great multitude of heavenly witnesses I offer myself, soul and body to You, Eternal Spirit of God. I adore the brightness of Your purity, the unerring keenness of Your justice, and the might of Your love. You are the Strength and Light of my soul. In You I live and move and am. I desire never to grieve You by unfaithfulness to grace and I pray with all my heart to be kept from the smallest sin against You. Mercifully guard my every thought and grant that I may always watch for Your light, and listen to Your voice, and follow Your gracious inspirations. I cling to You and give myself to You and ask You, by Your compassion to watch over me in my weakness. Holding the pierced Feet of Jesus and looking at His Five Wounds, and trusting in His Precious Blood and adoring His opened Side and stricken Heart, I implore You, Adorable Spirit, Helper of my infirmity, to keep me in Your grace that I may never sin against You. Give me grace O Holy Spirit, Spirit of the Father and the Son to say to You always and everywhere, "Speak Lord for Your servant heareth." Amen. PRAYER FOR THE SEVEN GIFTS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT O Lord Jesus Christ Who, before ascending into heaven did promise to send the Holy Spirit to finish Your work in the souls of Your Apostles and Disciples, deign to grant the same Holy Spirit to me that He may perfect in my soul, the work of Your grace and Your love. Grant me the Spirit of Wisdom that I may despise the perishable things of this world and aspire only after the things that are eternal, the Spirit of Understanding to enlighten my mind with the light of Your divine truth, the Spirit on Counsel that I may ever choose the surest way of pleasing God and gaining heaven, the Spirit of Fortitude that I may bear my cross with You and that I may overcome with courage all the obstacles that oppose my salvation, the Spirit of Knowledge that I may know God and know myself and grow perfect in the science of the Saints, the Spirit of Piety that I may find the service of God sweet and amiable, and the Spirit of Fear that I may be filled with a loving reverence towards God and may dread in any way to displease Him. Mark me, dear Lord with the sign of Your true disciples, and animate me in all things with Your Spirit. Amen CARDINAL BURKE'S NINE-MONTH NOVENA PRAYER O Virgin Mother of God, we fly to your protection and beg your intercession against the darkness and sin which ever more envelop the world and menace the Church. Your Son, Our Lord Jesus Christ, gave you to us as our mother as He died on the Cross for our salvation. So too, in 1531, when darkness and sin beset us, He sent you, as Our Lady of Guadalupe, on Tepeyac to lead us to Him Who alone is our light and our salvation. Through your apparitions on Tepeyac and your abiding presence with us on the miraculous mantle of your messenger, Saint Juan Diego, millions of souls converted to faith in your Divine Son. Through this novena and our consecration to you, we humbly implore your intercession for our daily conversion of life to Him and the conversion of millions more who do not yet believe in Him. In our homes and in our nation, lead us to Him Who alone wins the victory over sin and darkness in us and in the world. Unite our hearts to your Immaculate Heart so that they may find their true and lasting home in the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus. Ever guide us along the pilgrimage of life to our eternal home with Him. So may our hearts, one with yours, always trust in God's promise of salvation, in His never-failing mercy toward all who turn to Him with a humble and contrite heart. Through this novena and our consecration to you, O Virgin of Guadalupe, lead all souls in America and throughout the world to your Divine Son in Whose name we pray. Amen.

“Give me an army saying the Rosary and I will conquer the world.” – Blessed Pope Pius IX

Fathers have a crucial mission to be spiritual leaders for their families, and The Combat Rosary™ was designed specifically to equip men for this mission. This rosary was designed by Fr. Richard Heilman. Modeled after the 1916 WWI military-issue service rosary and stacked with sacramentals including a Pardon Crucifix, St. Benedict Medal and Miraculous Medal, the Combat Rosary™ is the only rosary you’ll ever need. Lifetime guaranteed. Let’s get the Combat Rosary into the hands of as many men as possible this Father’s Day! Order yours today.

Saints, Feast, Family

- Traditions passed down with Cooking, Crafting, & Caring  -

May 15

The month of Mary: A Marian Month​

Saint of the day:

Saint Dymphna

Patron Saint of those suffering for nervous and mental afflictions

Eat Steak and Fries

Wednesday of the Seventh Week of Easter

ST. ISIDORE the farmer

 

Exodus, Chapter 2, Verse 13-14

¹³The next day he went out again, and now two Hebrews were fighting! So, he asked the culprit, “Why are you striking your companion?” ¹⁴But he replied, “Who has appointed you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses became AFRAID and thought, “The affair must certainly be known.” 

Moses was a prince of Egypt and a Hebrew. Moses as a man sought justice for his Hebrew brothers and in a fit of anger killed an Egyptian that was brutalizing a Hebrew slave and secretly buried him in the sand. Secrecy is a key element in knowing your own sinfulness. When we find ourselves wanting to keep something secret, we should ask ourselves are we going down a road that we want to go; is this secrecy that we desire really an attempt to hide our sinfulness from God; who sees all things. Think twice the next time you seek secrecy.

What does the Bible say?[1]

1. Proverbs 28:13 “If you hide your sins, you will not succeed. If you confess and reject them, you will receive mercy.” (mercy verses)

2. Psalm 69:5 “God, you know what I have done wrong; I cannot hide my guilt from you.” (Guilt in the Bible)

3. Psalm 44:20-21 “If we had forgotten the name of our God or lifted our hands to a foreign god, wouldn’t God find out since he knows the secrets of the heart?”

4. Psalm 90:8 “You have set our wrong-doing before You, our secret sins in the light of Your face.”

5. Numbers 32:23 “But if you don’t do these things, you will be sinning against the Lord; know for sure that you will be punished for your sin.” God knows everything about you and He is always watching you.

6. Jeremiah 16:17-18 “I see everything they do. They cannot hide from me the things they do; their sin is not hidden from my eyes. I will pay back the people of Judah twice for every one of their sins, because they have made my land unclean. They have filled my country with their hateful idols.” (Idolatry in the Bible)

7. Psalm 139:1-2 “Lord, you have examined me and know all about me. You know when I sit down and when I get up. You know my thoughts before I think them.”

8. Psalm 139:3-7 “You know where I go and where I lie down. You know everything I do. Lord, even before I say a word, you already know it. You are all around me—in front and in back— and have put your hand on me. Your knowledge is amazing to me; it is more than I can understand. Where can I go to get away from your Spirit? Where can I run from you?” (God Bible verses)

9. Luke 12:1-2 “So many thousands of people had gathered that they were stepping on each other. Jesus spoke first to his followers, saying, “Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees, because they are hypocrites. Everything that is hidden will be shown, and everything that is secret will be made known.”

10. Hebrews 4:12-13 “God’s word is alive and working and is sharper than a double-edged sword. It cuts all the way into us, where the soul and the spirit are joined, to the center of our joints and bones. And it judges the thoughts and feelings in our hearts. Nothing in all the world can be hidden from God. Everything is clear and lies open before him, and to him we must explain the way we have lived.”

    The danger of unconfessed sin

11. Isaiah 59:1-2 “Surely the Lord’s power is enough to save you. He can hear you when you ask him for help. It is your evil that has separated you from your God. Your sins cause him to turn away from you, so he does not hear you.”

12. Psalm 66:18-19 “If I had harbored sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. However, God heard; he listened to my prayer.”

    Repent of the hidden sins you don’t know about.

13. Psalm 19:12 “How can I know all the sins lurking in my heart? Cleanse me from these hidden faults.”

    Repent: Turn away and follow Christ.

14. 1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” (Repentance in the Bible)

15.  2 Chronicles 7:14 “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

    Bonus: Don’t deny your sins. See it as God sees it.

Isaiah 55:8-9 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”

 

Catechism of the Catholic Church

PART FOUR: CHRISTIAN PRAYER

SECTION TWO-THE LORD'S PRAYER

Article 1-"THE SUMMARY OF THE WHOLE GOSPEL"

I. At the Center of the Scriptures

2762 After showing how the psalms are the principal food of Christian prayer and flow together in the petitions of the Our Father, St. Augustine concludes:

Run through all the words of the holy prayers [in Scripture], and I do not think that you will find anything in them that is not contained and included in the Lord's Prayer.

2763 All the Scriptures - the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms - are fulfilled in Christ. The Gospel is this "Good News." Its first proclamation is summarized by St. Matthew in the Sermon on the Mount; The prayer to our Father is at the center of this proclamation. It is in this context that each petition bequeathed to us by the Lord is illuminated:

The Lord's Prayer is the most perfect of prayers.... In it we ask, not only for all the things we can rightly desire, but also in the sequence that they should be desired. This prayer not only teaches us to ask for things, but also in what order we should desire them.

2764 The Sermon on the Mount is teaching for life, the Our Father is a prayer; but in both the one and the other the Spirit of the Lord gives new form to our desires, those inner movements that animate our lives. Jesus teaches us this new life by his words; he teaches us to ask for it by our prayer. The rightness of our life in him will depend on the rightness of our prayer.

Apostolic Exhortation[2]

Veneremur Cernui – Down in Adoration Falling

of The Most Reverend Thomas J. Olmsted, Bishop of Phoenix,
to Priests, Deacons, Religious and the Lay Faithful of the Diocese of Phoenix on the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist

My beloved Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

7. Like the People of Israel, we too are heading into difficult waters. Today we find ourselves in a crisis; many anxieties, uncertainties and doubts assail us from every side. As I said in my pastoral letter “O Sacred Feast,” the Church at large is experiencing a grave crisis of faith in the Eucharist. This crisis has inflicted additional significant implications for authentic Christian discipleship; namely, abysmal Mass attendance, declining vocations to marriage, priesthood, and religious life, waning Catholic influence in society. As a nation we are experiencing a torrent of assaults upon the truth. The Gospel message has been watered down or replaced with ambiguous worldly values. Many Christians have abandoned Christ and His Gospel and turned to a secular culture for meaning that it cannot provide and to satiate a hunger that it can never satisfy.

8. In such troubled waters, our greatest anchor in these storms is Christ Himself, found in the Holy Eucharist. Though the instruction of Joshua was intended for the People of Israel facing formidable enemies as they crossed into the Promised Land, his words remain crucial for us: “Follow the Ark of the Lord, for we have never been this way before”.

9. As God’s People today, we are also on a journey to a promised inheritance, a journey also filled with dangers, challenges, and suffering. We do not have a column of cloud by day nor a pillar of fire by night reminding us of God’s presence ever guiding and protecting us as He did for the People of Israel. We do not have the Ark of the Covenant in our midst. Instead, we have not something but Someone much greater! Someone greater than the Ark who goes before us and is always with us. We have Jesus Christ truly present in the Eucharist to guide, comfort, and strengthen us. In times like these, echoing the instruction of Joshua, we must fix our gaze on the Lord and draw near to Him more than ever in the Eucharist. The more the Lord in the Eucharist is our central focus, the more surely, He will bring us through these dark and turbulent waters. On this day when we commemorate the Institution of the Eucharist, I as your shepherd implore each of you to seek out Jesus in the Eucharist to be strengthened and renewed in your faith.

“Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink.”

To be continued…

St. Isidore[3]

 

When he was barely old enough to wield a hoe, Isidore entered the service of John de Vergas, a wealthy landowner from Madrid, and worked faithfully on his estate outside the city for the rest of his life. He married a young woman as simple and upright as himself who also became a saint-Maria de la Cabeza. They had one son, who died as a child. Isidore had deep religious instincts. He rose early in the morning to go to church and spent many a holiday devoutly visiting the churches of Madrid and surrounding areas. All day long, as he walked behind the plow, he communed with God. His devotion, one might say, became a problem, for his fellow workers sometimes complained that he often showed up late because of lingering in church too long. He was known for his love of the poor, and there are accounts of Isidore's supplying them miraculously with food. He had a great concern for the proper treatment of animals.

 

He died May 15, 1130, and was declared a saint in 1622 with Ignatius of Loyola, Francis Xavier, Teresa of Avila and Philip Neri. Together, the group is known in Spain as "the five saints."

 

Things to Do:

 

·         Learn more about St. Isidore the farmer.

·         Establishing or replenishing a a Mary garden would be an appropriate way to celebrate the combination of the feast of St. Isidore and the month of May, dedicated to Mary.

·         There is also a lovely book on Mary gardens printed by St. Anthony Messenger Press called Mary's Flowers: Gardens, Legends and Meditations by Vincenzina Krymow.

 

Armed Forces Day Build

 

US Navy[4]

John Barry, an Irish Catholic, was the "Father of the American Navy." He has been forgotten by all but a few historians, but he outranks John Paul Jones and was the official father of the Continental and U.S. Naval forces. He went to sea at a young age in Ireland and settled in Philadelphia. In October 1775, John was given command of the Continental Congress vessel, the Leviathan, and his commission, the first issued, was dated Dec. 7, 1775. When the war began, John Barry served in a spectacular manner. If his ship was shot out from under him, he and his crew battled on land. They were with George Washington at Trenton and Princeton. At the end of the war, Congress enacted on March 27, 1794, a law establishing the U.S. Navy. The U. S. Senate issued the appointments of officers made by George Washington, and John Barry's commission reads: "Captain of the U.S. Navy...to take rank from the 4th day of June, 1784...registered No. 1." With victory in hand at the end of the Revolutionary War, Americans in cities, towns and villages chanted a new ditty:

'Irish Commodore'

"There are gallant hearts whose glory

Columbia loves to name,

Whose deeds shall live in story

And everlasting fame.

But never yet one braver

Our starry baner bore,

Then saucy old Jack Barry,

The Irish Commodore."

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Please pray for the intentions of my dear friend from my South Pole adventure and the Godfather of my daughter Claire, the eminent Navy Chief James Grace.

 Every Wednesday is Dedicated to St. Joseph

The Italian culture has always had a close association with St. Joseph perhaps you could make Wednesdays centered around Jesus’s Papa. Plan an Italian dinner of pizza or spaghetti after attending Mass as most parishes have a Wednesday evening Mass. You could even do carry out to help restaurants. If you are adventurous, you could do the Universal Man Plan: St. Joseph style. Make the evening a family night perhaps it could be a game night. Whatever you do make the day special.

·         Devotion to the 7 Joys and Sorrows of St. Joseph

·         Do the St. Joseph Universal Man Plan.

Dara’s Corner-Navy Hunks and Movies

Daily Devotions

·         Unite in the work of the Porters of St. Joseph by joining them in fasting: The Families of St. Joseph Porters

·         Litany of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus

·         Offering to the sacred heart of Jesus

·         Make reparations to the Holy Face

·         Drops of Christ’s Blood

·         Universal Man Plan

·         Rosary

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[1] https://biblereasons.com/secret-sins/

[2]https://dphx.org/veneremur-cernui/

[3]https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/liturgicalyear/calendar/day.cfm?date=2019-05-15

[4]https://www.osv.com/OSVNewsweekly/ByIssue/Article/TabId/735/ArtMID/13636/ArticleID/4207/Catholic-Heroes-of-early-America.aspx