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Showing posts with the label rosary

The Casino

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The Casino The Lord had put it on my heart to go to the Casino.  I wondered why I had to actually go to the Casino, so I asked Him, "Lord, why do I have to go?  I can pray for them in front of the Blessed Sacrament!"   The answer was silence.  So, in obedience, I filled up my car and went to the Horseshoe Casino.... To find out what happened at the Casino, click HERE!

Sing the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary wiith children

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Back in Advent, Dan and I sang The Angel Gabriel from Heaven Came as part of our Evening Prayer. It struck me how perfect this hymn was for teaching children about the Annunciation. I conceived the idea (yes, that’s a pun) of teaching children the meaning of the mysteries of the Rosary through song. Here it was I came up with for the Joyful Mysteries. My primary goal in our Contemplative Homeschool is to teach our children how to grow in union with God. Christian meditation is a vital part of that process, teaching all of us to listen to God’s voice in the Scriptures, and to ponder His character in order to love Him better. The Rosary provides a bridge between the vocal prayers we learn as children and more mature mental prayer. Through the Rosary, we meditate on the most important mysteries of our faith. Many people have created ways to share the Rosary with children. In Singing the Rosary, I have the following goals: leading children to see the Rosary as a mea

Back From The Edge

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Many of us never know how close we have come to going to hell.  I found out today just how close I really came to being in the place of eternal torment.  Really close. When my husband was alive I had come back to the Catholic Church and I prayed my Rosary and loved to spend time with our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament.  After my husband died, everything hurt, and I mean everything.  Little things like going to the grocery store or watching t.v. was painful, and yes going to church was painful too because everywhere I was, I could feel his absence.  (He never went to church with me, but I prayed for him much there.)  Well, after his death, I was hurting so bad, that I just didn't care about anything, myself included.  All I wanted was to not hurt just for a little while.  I worked 50 hours a week, because I knew if I kept busy the 'demon' of sadness was kept at bay.  (There is a physical law that you can't think of two things at the same time, so the busier I was

The Cliff/Why Every Priest Should Be A Saint

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I'm standing near the edge of a cliff.  The land is barren with no vegetation.  The edge of the cliff is jagged.  I look over the edge and see a drop that takes my breath away.  This is the eternal pit that if you fall in, you never come out of.  The fall into this darkness is for miles and miles.  At the bottom of this pit are horrors that I will not mention here.   I look to my right and a mile wide along the edge of the cliff there are people standing at the edge ready to fall in.  Behind them, packed very tightly are thousands of souls behind the ones on the edge and they are so tightly packed that they cannot move even their arms easily.  They cannot run from the horror that awaits them as there is something constraining them, keeping them in place.  Occasionally one or two will break free of the bonds that are holding them and run away from the path of destruction.   Then I see the most horrible thing.  People were being added to the back of this horrible line and the ad

Have You Taken Your Medicine Today?

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“ It is a special medicine… Do not forget to take it, because it does us good: the heart, the soul, our whole life! ” −Pope Francis Check out the medicine our Papa has prescribed! [via link] Pope Francis Prescribes “Misericordina” to Faithful: “On the outside it looks just like any medicine box, with the contents clearly printed on it: 59 intracordial pellets…” http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/the-vatican/detail/articolo/francesco-francis-francisco-misericordia-mercy-29803/ Photo of Rosary given to me by my Irish mom.--EF   http://thewaytonourishforlife.wordpress.com/    

Are you praying too much?

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Victory, O Lord by Millais (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons). Sunday’s Mass readings were all about prayer–winning battles through prayer, supporting each other in prayer, and never giving up. I love encouraging people to grow in their prayer life!  But today I want to ask a question that might seem odd to you: Can you pray too much? There are three ways in which I believe you can. Don’t let prayer keep you from living out your vocation   Again, this might confuse you. Haven’t I said before that prayer helps us live our vocation better ? That’s true. But you still need balance. If you are a stay-at-home mom with small children, you should not be spending hours a day alone in your room praying. If you are the father of a young family, you should not be spending most of every evening at Church. If you are a college student, you should not normally miss class to go to adoration. St. Francis de Sales, instructing lay people in Introduction to the Devout Life, wrote,

Study Mary with the Popes

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I won’t lie; getting permission from Libreria Editrice Vaticana to gather a dozen papal encyclicals together for a unique Marian study was, well, awesome! Holding the contract in hand, gave me goose bumps. To share my excitement, the contract in part reads: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, located in the Vatican City State, in the person of the its Director and pro tempore legal representative, Prof. Don Giuseppe COSTA, sdb and Bezalel Books, A Catholic Publishing Company and Bookstore, Box 300427 Waterford, MI 48330 , in the person of its President and pro tempore legal representative, Cheryl DICKOW. Libreria Editrice Vaticana grants to Bezalel Books, a non exclusive permission to reproduce , in the work entitled:  MARY EVER VIRGIN FULL OF GRACE. A STUDY OF PAPAL ENCYCLICALS ON MARY, by Cheryl Dickow, the following excerpts: The contract then goes on to list the dozen encyclicals that are in the book which begin with Octobri Menseo the September 22, 1891 encyclical of Pop

Fight! Fight! Fight!

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I hear so many people say, "Well, if you aren't getting fed at your parish - find another one." or they say, "If your priest distorts the Mass and the sacraments, then go somewhere else." I don't agree with this. If your priest is distorting the Holy Mass or the sacraments, do find a valid mass so that you can be fed, but make sure you come back to the parish where things may not just be "right" and do much prayer and penance for that Priest.  Do not abandon him.  He is precious to God, and what a great gift is given to God if he is turned back from the darkness! For at his hands how many more are touched and if he is obedient to the M agisterium, his obedience will beget good, faithful Catholics.  Pray many Rosaries for him, do penance for him, fast for him, ask God to put it in his heart to take up his Rosary again, for the Holy Rosary demolishes all heresies.   Once I went to Holy Mass (I won't say where) and the Priest was totally de

Back to Mary, Our Dearest Mother

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Lately, I have been crabbier than usual, both inside church and out. People disappoint me. I disappoint myself.  Luckily, I have a friend, a mother, a confidante, to whom I always can turn. I ask the Blessed Mother to pray for me, and I believe she does. Read more here...

Patriotic Rosary

I will openly admit that I drove myself—and my husband—a bit crazy in the 2008 election cycle. I’m not sure why since I had never, ever been that impassioned about an election. Specifically, the pro-life issue mattered to me in a whole new, surprising way. I also turned 50 that year so I’d like to place some of the blame on that fact—but who knows for sure. This year I decided to do my best to keep my passions, emotions, and opinions more to myself. I wasn’t going to write dozens of articles and try to convince anyone of anything. Depending on where you sit in the political arena, that either sounds cowardly if you are a passionate pro-life citizen or that sounds perfectly fine if you aren’t much into politics and feel that it is always “the lesser of two evils” anyhow. As things heat up this 2012 election cycle, I admit that it isn’t easy for me to sit on the sidelines; but sit I have been. Let me clarify that: I sit on the sidelines while I do the Patriotic Rosary—one o