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Words whispered in my heart. You think you are building my Church, w ith all your hectic activity. But in reality you are not helping me at all. You are hindering my true work on earth. All I want,  All I need, Is for you to c ome and stand  at the foot of my Son's Cross. Let the fire of His Love  p ierce your heart, t ransforming you into   His Presence on  Earth .

What would You do if you knew that in two days You would celebrate Your last Passover with your family and friends? What would You do if You knew that soon after Your Passover meal, you would be abandoned and deserted by those you loved, as You prayed to Your Father to "let this cup pass."? What would You do if You knew that one of those whom You loved would betray You and hand You over to be crucified on a cross? What would You do if, in spite of their promises to be with You to the end, even if it meant death, the man You chose to lead Your church would betray You not once, not twice, but three times, denying that he even knew You.     Read more at:: His Unending Love

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  At Mass on Sunday we sang the spiritual “Were you There?” It got me thinking. How we long to have been with Jesus during His passion, death, and resurrection. How we would have loved to stand and support His mother at the foot of the Cross, to wipe His face with Veronica, to pray with Him in the Garden of Gethsemane. (Yes, I know that was in reverse order.) Serendipitously, we sang this song at Communion time. And I suddenly realized that I was there! Continue reading at Contemplative Homeschool.

Lawrence OP St Augustine, Flickr Creative Commons "Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would have not been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace." from The Confessions of Saint Augustine This prayer of St. Augustine reminded me that it’s not enough to ride on the surface of life. Click here to continue.

In the past, I would have been so stressed.  I would have beaten myself up because I failed. I did not give to God what I had hoped to give Him,  and  that was a Lent of  adoration, prayer, almsgiving and sacrifice. But God is good. He knew I needed to learn some things, and, trust me, He taught me.   Read more at:: His Unending Love

I could be a Christian, following my Lord, if I believed that we live on a flat plate with nothing between us and the cosmic ocean but a sold dome that holds the stars. But my faith doesn't depend on maintaining ignorance of what we've learned in the last two dozen or so centuries. Imagery in 1 Samuel 2:8 and Psalms 148:4 is beautiful, poetic, and consistent with Mesopotamian cosmology : hardly surprising, considering where the Hebrews lived. That was then, this is now, and we've learned quite a bit about the universe since the days of Kubaba and Enmerkar . Some details of their lives seem exaggerated, but folks still pad their resumes, and that — isn't another topic.... More at A Catholic Citizen in America .

I am thankful for the many aids we've been given to help us pray.  Just today, sidetracked during the Office of Morning Prayer, I found my way back more than once through words on paper before me. In case anyone else has a mind that 'drifts' now and then, here are some keys I've found to help open doors to prayer. While these are readily accessible without needing to be sought online, I am including links for anyone who may find those beneficial. Scripture. The current day's Mass readings are an ideal source for Lectio Divina . These can be found by starting here , or here.   The Divine Office . This is the prayer of the Church, in which nuns, monks, clergy, religious and laity all over the world are participating, as one, on the same days. In addition to being available in bound volumes, this is free with no registration necessary online at Divine Office.org . The entire day of prayer is right there, printed and with (optional) audio. Bound volumes a...

Available through Pauline Press and Amazon As a backdrop, I would be remiss if I also did not share the infinitely amusing ways God continues to make his presence known in my life and how I obtained my current copy of this book.  To my delightful surprise one Sunday, the Pauline sisters visited my home parish of St. Peter’s in Plymouth. After mass, I hurriedly ran downstairs to peruse the numerous collections to be had. Let’s be honest, the gracious invitation of our sisters and my passion for books are two areas in my life that I find great difficulty saying “no” to. Having spied this book, my husband saw the gleam in my eyes and knew he would not be leaving church empty handed. However, having only had it in my possession for less than a day, I felt compelled to share it with a friend and her daughter. Read More...

The Gospel of John  (2003) directed by Philip Saville  The Commemoration of the Lord’s Entrance into Jerusalem John 12:12-16. The next day the great crowd that had come to the festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem.   So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, shouting, “Hosanna!  Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord— the King of Israel!” Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it; as it is written: “Do not be afraid, daughter of Zion.  Look, your king is coming,   sitting on a donkey’s colt!” His disciples did not understand these things at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written of him and had been done to him. At the Mass   Gospel   Mark 14:1 – 15:47  or  15:1-39 Chalice , Gilt Silver,1450 -1500, Hungarian Goldsmith Hungarian National Museum, Budapest  Then he took a cup, and afte...

So much to pray for.  Where do I begin? Do you feel that way sometimes?  I've been feeling like that a lot lately.  Before I left for vacation, I prayed the rosary every night so that I could  actually get on the plane !  During vacation, I prayed for our safety and well-being.  When I got home, I prayed for my family, friends and my job.  My prayer life has become overwhelming! You can read the rest at Being Catholic ... Really .

Years ago I went through a severe trial and very intense spiritual warfare. After that happened, I cried out to the Lord and told him, "I just want a normal, leisurely life"!  Well, he heard my prayer and he left me alone for the next 6 years. Needless to say, I was miserable! There were no spiritual consolations; I did not sense or hear from the Lord at all during that time. The worst part about it though was my passion towards him was gone! I had no desire to pray or serve him. I felt like Jesus could have appeared in all his glory right in front of me and I would not have been moved. It was a very scary place to be and even made me question my salvation. Continue Reading @ Beautiful Thorns >

Scientists learned how using our thumbs changes our brains by collecting data from 26 smartphone users, 11 users of "old-fashioned cellphones," and electroencephalography. Building your own robot is getting a whole lot easier, now that RoboCORE is around. It's a robotic central nervous system you can program with C++ or Python.... When I was in high school, I learned that adult brains were static, unchanging. Neuroscientists thought, or assumed, that once we get past youth — that our brains don't change: no new neurons, no new connections between neurons. They were wrong.... More at A Catholic Citizen in America .

I will extol you, my God and King,      and bless your name forever and ever.   Every day I will bless you,      and praise your name forever and ever. Great is the Lord , and greatly to be praised;      his greatness is unsearchable. Psalm 145: 1-3 Praise the L ORD , for he is good; for his mercy endures forever; Praise the God of gods; for his mercy endures forever; Praise the Lord of lords; for his mercy endures forever; Psalm 136: 1-3       Read More at:: His Unending Love

The following is a true story of a four-year-old Catholic child, in a coma, following a serious car accident. Chandra was still not conscious when she began to speak to her parents in the ICU unit. She spoke as if in a dream, describing a big room with two doors where she sat waiting with several other people.  She explained that she had to decide which door she wanted to walk through. A really nice man, dressed in white smiled at her and told her that she was completely free to walk through either door.  One door would bring her back to her life on earth. If she liked, she could across the room, take the nice man’s hand and walk through the other door.   continue reading

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Eddie Clifford Beal III, Esq., son of  Dr Alveda King  (Martin Luther King Jr.'s niece), talks about his mother's abortion. You can listen and see the video at Being Catholic ... Really .

"By the sweat of your face      you shall eat bread until you return to the ground,      for out of it you were taken; you are dust,      and to dust you shall return.” Genesis 3: 19   Oh, My Jesus, forgive us our sins. Save us from the  fires of hell. Lead all souls to heaven, especially those who are in most need of your mercy.   Read More at:  His Unending Love

My daughter and I traveled to New York City for our winter vacation.  If you read my blog, you probably read my post,  My fear of flying . To read how I conquered my fear and see the photo gallery, please visit Being Catholic ... Really .

If you’re like me, you hate making mistakes. I like to think I’m perfect, and doing a foolish thing punctures my ego. It’s bad enough when I’m the only one who knows about it, but worse when others witness or hear about it. What pops into my mind is the day I was making cheese soufflé and a large amount of cayenne pepper fell into the mixture. “We never taste it anyway,” I thought. “I’ll leave it in.” Well, that evening the sisters really tasted it! To top it off, the next morning for breakfast I used baking soda instead of baking powder in our pancakes, turning them into a gritty substitute for toothpaste. That was long ago, but I continue to do and say dumb things, living proof that “to err is human.” Click to continue

Happy Palm Sunday (this weekend!) and Feast of the Annunciation! And Easter! (Almost!) Soon we'll all be saying: He is risen- he is risen indeed! Now that Lent is indeed almost over, as we're looking back, I have to be honest about these almost 40 days. We took Lent by the horns this year. It was hard. We went full-throttle and gave up a whole bunch of really lovely things.  It was extremely hard at times not to eat that piece of chocolate. But we did learn - oh boy did we learn- a whole bunch. All of us. The whole family!  So, the question remains: what- exactly-  did  we learn during Lent this year? 1. Prayer First of all, we learned to pray more.  In the afternoons, when I usually have my cup of tea and read while the kids nap, I often felt a slight depression at having decided to limit caffeine and my intake of hot tea.  During those times, I usually prayed. I found it so hard not to resort to my usual compulsive behavior: checking all of the social ...

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I am happy to announce that I have published a 44-question quiz to determine your children’s primary temperaments. You can also use it for yourself. You can download it free through Smashwords for your Kindle, Nook, iPad, or as a PDF. I also uploaded it to Amazon, but Amazon only allows free distribution during special offers or as a price match. I have notified Amazon that the quiz is free elsewhere. I hope they drop the price to free soon. That is beyond my control. (It currently sells there for $.99.) Please download your free copy of Determining Your Child’s Temperament: a brief quiz for Catholic parents. If you find it helpful, please post a review on Smashwords or Amazon so that others can benefit. Share the links with your friends, family, and homeschool co-op. Let me know if I can improve it in anyway. Thank you. Continue reading at Contemplative Homeschool.

Prayer is the place where "heart speaks to heart," as John Henry Cardinal Newman says. Using Scripture, we can enter into Jesus' experience of Holy Week; we can place our hearts into his. We can read the Passion accounts of the Gospels and ask Jesus for the gift of compassion, of suffering with him in his agony. Jesus himself invites us to do this when, in the midst of his agony in the garden, he calls to his disciples and to us: Remain here and keep watch with me. Matthew 26:38 "Gethsemane" © Deror Avi / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-3.0 St. Ignatius of Loyola proposes a deeply personal and imaginative way to remain with Jesus. A master strategist and student of the human soul, St. Ignatius articulated a process of praying with Scripture that allows us to encounter Jesus personally. This kind of imaginative prayer engages all the senses and has come to be known as Ignatian Contemplation. At the Apostleship of Prayer, we call it praying with the he...

Though this is a new post,the idea of revisiting the Stations of the Cross is a much needed conversation to be had this Lent. And one that in true Jesuit imagining I invite you to consider: This past week as I accompanied my 4 th  grade students, from this past summer, for the Stations of the Cross I began to think... Why do we not do this more often?  Here, we have been given this beautiful imaginative way to immerse ourselves in the story of the Passion of our Lord. More than merely listening we are asked to  contemplate  the scene, and  walk in faith with Christ  on the way to the cross. As we picture the faces of the crowd, the thoughts of the disciples, and the heart of Christ himself we glimpse the magnitude of the sacrifice of love that has been given to us. If you have never participated in the Stations of the Cross before, all are welcome, just call your local parish for the date and time. This is a graced pilgrimage and one that I hope that yo...

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'Prayer is the door  to favors as great as those He has granted me.  If this door is closed, I don't know how He will grant them.' St. Teresa of Avila   from The Cloistered Heart

Someone called my father-in-law, asking which set of Bible readings were were using this week. It's a reasonable question. One set for this fifth Sunday in Lent is Ezekiel 37:12 - 14 ; Romans 8:8 - 11 ; and John 11:1 - 45 . The other, labeled "Fifth Sunday of Lent - Year A Scrutinies," is Jeremiah 31:31 - 33 ; Hebrews 5:7 - 9 ; and John 12:20 - 33 . Having options isn't odd: readings for some Sundays include an abbreviated version — I'm not a big fan of those, since I like hearing Sacred Scripture, and my attention span doesn't time out quite that fast.... More at A Catholic Citizen in America .

Whilst giving a series of lectures on prayer at Belmont Abbey, I was cornered by one of the participants who demanded to know my qualifications. Although I was taken aback, I couldn’t but concede that he had every right to know whether or not the lecturer was worth the time and money he had spent. After all, if I’d been giving a course on scripture, theology or canon law the participants would have had every right to expect that I had an MA – if not a PhD – in the relevant subject on which I was holding forth. I found it embarrassing to admit therefore that I hadn’t any such qualifications in those subjects. On reflection, however, I realized that it was precisely because I had no such qualification that I was able to give the lectures and, for that matter, write all my books. You see, ‘ My name is David and I am a dyslexic .’ It took more than forty years before I was able to say those words, thanks to a chance meeting with a doctor who knew something about what she called ‘ my gif...

The Spirit of God flows through our imperfections.   An Allegory.                 An  idealistic young man, Mark, traveled a great distance to find a well-known holy man to mentor him. Although this elder, Fr. Simon, was a confirmed hermit, Mark noticed he was becoming physically weak. Ingeniously, Mark offered the perfect exchange; he would do the heavy chores for the elderly monk, freeing valuable hours so Father would have more than enough spare time to teach him how to live a spiritual life. This earnest young fellow was determined to do his work so well the monk would never regret sharing his hermitage and more importantly, his wisdom with him. . One of the new novice’s daily chores was to haul water from a creek nearby with a yoke across his shoulders. On each end of a pole hung large clay pots. However, one of the pots had a crack in it while the other pot was perfect and always deliv...

St. Michael the Archangel and the Souls in Purgatory   The trap of Purgatory is too many souls rely on Purgatory as the destination of their soul after death, and slap God in the face by not trusting in His mercy, and do not seek Heaven.  They use Purgatory as their "backup plan" and as a result lead lukewarm lives, saying to themselves that in an exchange for just doing the "minimum" faith requirement, thinking that when they die they will just have to spend a few years in Purgatory and then eventually end up in Heaven. Whether we spend time in Purgatory is at  God's  discretion, not ours.   The greatest misuse of Purgatory is that many Catholics do not fear God because of Purgatory. Those that hang their hopes on Purgatory are already among the lukewarm and possibly among those heading to the second death. Jesus will spit those out of His mouth that have failed to make every effort to follow Jesus and heaven, NOT Purgatory. To READ MORE: CLICK HERE! ...

Our visit to the National September 11 Memorial and Museum is hard to describe. You can read the article and view the photo gallery at Being Catholic ... Really .

A bit shy of eight decades ago, a pilot and navigator set off on a round-the-world flight that should have provided ample material for her next book . Instead, shortly after midnight, July 2, 1937 GMT , the modified Lockheed Model 10 Electra disappeared. She's still famous — and now has an invisible Lunar crater named after her. Eventually, Fred Noonan may have some rock named after him, or maybe not. In a perfect world, folks in the support crew would get a tad more recognition — my opinion — but this isn't a perfect world. What's remarkable about Earhart Crater is that it's big , on the side of Earth's moon facing our planet — and buried under billions of years' of accumulated debris. Scientists found it while sifting through gravitational data. Other scientists found that lava tubes would be strong and safe enough to house a Lunar base, and Messenger took pictures of ice on Mercury. More at A Catholic Citizen in America .

St. Paul's Chapel is the third and final church in my series, Touring New York City's beautiful churches.  Opening in in 1766, St. Paul survived "The Great Fire" of 1776 that destroyed over 500 structures in Manhattan, including the first  Trinity Church  building. You can read the rest of the article and view the photo gallery at Being Catholic ... Really .

Often, when I don't even realize that I am looking for something, it finds me. Over the past several years I have transitioned from the high-energy, exhaustive workouts that I mistakenly thought were good for me into slower, more contemplative, gentler forms of exercise that  for the most part leave me feeling better,  or at least a little less in the mindset of beating my body into something other than what it already is. As my exercise patterns have changed, so too has my spiritual life. Slowly, I am coming to the realization that the body that I have is the one that was created just for me. While there are some days that I am totally resistant to that understanding and wake up with a plan to start beating myself up again, for the most part I have started to accept that truly taking care of myself and being healthy fully extends itself into all other aspects of my life.  I worry less about making myself in to someone that I am not and concentrate on becoming the ...

    Lent is a beautiful time of growing closer to Christ by giving of ourselves through the good works of prayer, fasting and alms giving. In these ways, we aspire to imitate Our Blessed Lord in the way that he gave Himself, without reservation,  to all of us. Fear is the greatest obstacle to generosity. Holy Scriptures teach us that love casts out all fear.       While visiting Guatemala, I was overwhelmed by the generosity of the people there. Their life is a life of poverty by our country's standards. What amazed and humbled me was the freedom with which people gave of their time, work and goods. They did not hold back. There was no measuring of how much was given nor was there an expectation of anything in return. Giving to those in need came easily.  Continued here... Alms Giving Prayer Fasting

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Last week was an interesting week. I learned many things about myself including the facts that 1) I do love God. I didn't think I did. 2) God loves me. I wasn't sure about that. I AM BELOVED! I also learned that 1) I didn't like myself. 2) I didn't love myself. 3) I felt I was unworthy of love. I AM WORTHY! I also learned that because  Read More at:: His Unending Love