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Last night, I had planned to clean up, then write this blog.  I started to walk down the stairs from the bedroom to the living room.  I remember thinking, “I need to put a light here (at the bottom) so that I can see better.” I took a step down.  The next thing I knew I was on my back on the floor, and I heard 3 loud pops in my ankle.  Ouch!  (I offered it up.) God had other plans.      A friend took me to Urgent Care.  I thought we would be in and out.  I was the last person to be seen.  God had other plans.  It took much longer than I thought to see the doctor, then, there was the X-Ray.  I met a lovely young woman, the x-ray tech, who told me that it wasn’t my age that caused me to fall, because she always fell down the stairs.  (She was grace and kindness!)  Then it was back to the room to wait, again, for the doctor. (An exercise in the virtue of patience?)      The doctor didn’t seem to know what to do with me.  She asked me what I wanted to do.  Huh? ( Again an

Marianne Stokes was an Austrian painter who lived from 1855-1927. She uses rich colours and detailed symbolism but it is the intense expressions on the faces of her Madonnas, saints and the Christ Child which are most arresting.   children bringing water to be blessed St. Hiledgard spinning the annunciation                                                                                                                        

   I am compelled to write about a deep paradigm shift that Is happening inside me that is in the realm of the experiences described in “The Cloud of Unknowing”  because I am completely  clueless about this inner work.  All of God's work is happening under my  radar. until something triggers tears which seem to pop up from no where. No room for pride here. It is all about Him and He is probably keeping me in the dark because I would just get in the way. Just typing these words brings tears to my eyes once again. I am not exactly sure what is going on in my spirit and soul but I do know that a huge shift is happening. When I stop for a moment , my shoulders sag as  warmth floods my heart AND my body. I am aware of God’s presence. All I understand cognitively is that God is at work within me and I could break down and weep in gratitude for answered prayers. I have longed for such intimacy for   decades, not days or weeks or even a few years but for a few decades I have worke

[part of the SmallSuccess link-up on CatholicMom.com] The pedicurist recoiled in horror when she beheld the extent of my callouses. "Callous cream," she sternly recommended, and then proceeded to chatter excitedly in Korean to the pedicurist next to her, presumably describing my icky feet in gory detail. After rubbing the magic callous removal cream into my feet and scraping, scraping, scraping, the pedicurist triumphantly raised the scraper with the incontrovertible evidence of my appallingly negligent foot care. She must have thought I had been herding yak barefoot over the Russian steppes all last summer. But, with six kids, I don't have time for weekly or even monthly visits to the nail salon. And I made a bargain with myself not to get that annual mani-pedi until my husband and I revised the proposal on our marriage advice book and sent it off to the publisher. As soon as I pressed the send button on the proposal, I hustled down to the local NAILS NAILS NAILS!

I want to stop loving my sin So I can stop offending Him Because I want to be like Jesus I want to stop thinking of me So I can love like Him Because I want to be like Jesus I want only to speak the Love in my heart So I can radiate Him Because I want to be like Jesus I want to give everything good And keep nothing for me Because I want to be like Jesus I want to breathe my perfect trust in Him                                               So that others see there is nothing to fear       Because I want to be like Jesus                                  I want others to feel my joy To show them the way                           Because I want to be like Jesus                                  I want others to see                                                   That I am nothing without Him                                 Because I want to be like Jesus     I want others to know That to be His Martyr of Love Is to please m

The Fifteenth promise to those faithful to pray the daily Rosary is that this devotion is a special sign of predestination. When I was a child, the Sisters taught us the following from the Baltimore Catechism:      Question:  Why did God make me?      Response:  God made me to love Him and serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him forever in the next.      A beautiful way to learn precisely how to love and serve God in this world is to become familiar with the life, teachings, virtues and miracles of Jesus. Over a lifetime, contemplating the life of Jesus by praying the Rosary daily gently weaves these virtues securely into the unique tapestry each individual's consciousness. Imitating Jesus inevitably leads our souls to eternity with Him in heaven.    "All the world is vanity except to love God and serve Him only." (Thomas A. Kempis,  The   Imitation of Christ )    I n a temporally minute yet supernaturally infinite way, while the praying the Rosary, our

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,

Hebrews 4:1 For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Ephesians 6:17 And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

UBI CARITAS ET AMOR. DEUS IBI EST. Father Ignatius’ policy with the people he met was to be as open and honest as possible when discussing matters or when giving advice or guidance. This included the youngsters he met at both Catholic schools, who, more often than not, asked direct personal questions and expected a straight answer. They were astute enough to know when someone was avoiding the question or giving them flannel.   The discussion during Catechism class was about vocations and the celibacy of priests and nuns. Father Ignatius had been asked by a young pupil why priests and nuns are celibate. “Let me see if I can answer this honestly and in personal terms,” said Father Ignatius. “There is, as you know a physical life which we all live right now, and a spiritual life which some people choose to follow at the same time. “God wants us to enjoy our physical life and for us to live it in service of others so that He may be glorified by what we d

Where does Evil Come From? In the beginning God Said, "Let there be light."  And there was light.  God creates with His word, and when He gave the angels free will He also gave them this ability to create out of their words, although to a much lesser degree.  God is all good, there is no darkness in Him.  However, having infinite knowledge of His creation, He knew of evil as a concept (because God knows all things), but evil only existed in the mind of God as a concept, a potentiality.  When he gave the angels free will they two had a knowledge of what rebellion what evil was as a concept, otherwise their will would not be free because they would have no other choice but the good God.  It was a concept, and so as to truly choose God freely, they were given knowledge of "another way".  Again, this was only a concept in the mind of God and the angels, at this time evil did not yet exist.   God did not create evil, even though He knew about it.  By his

What should we do when people in our social circle abandon their marriages? When they're openly, even scandalously, unfaithful? Kristin Gomez has encountered this situation one too many times, and now she's speaking out about it. A graduate of the University of Virginia and former Spanish teacher, Kristin is now a homeschooling mother of 6 in Manassas, Virginia. She's part of a core team of couples at All Saints Catholic Church who are using the Alexander House resource, Covenant of Love, to help create "a marriage minded community." Best of all, she's  married to a Colombian and living la vida loca, Catholic style! Abandonment is when one spouse leaves the other despite the other's pleas for counseling and healing of the marriage in the hopes to restore love and stability to their family. (I'm not talking about the legal definition of abandonment here, just the common-sense meaning of the word.) Check the stats, but surprisingly this is MANY,

Large families are an anomaly in desperate need of an advocate in modern society. A writing prompt on a health website asked, ”Are you an advocate for any cause?” I sputtered to myself, ”I am not an advocate for anything or anybody!” Immediately after that statement, a new idea popped into my mind, ”Hey, wait a minute. I stand up for large families in modern society!” Thoughts on Large Families In my experience as a mother of nine children, I have met more condemnation than acceptance and more questions that understanding. Perhaps it is because I do not look like the mother of a large family. I am tiny, look younger than my age, and all my life people have labelled me as cute. People’s first reaction to me is shock. Confusion follows because I am happy. A joyful, cute, tiny mother of nine simply baffles people. I shatter all their preconceived notions. The typical image of a multipara woman would be a large, matronly, robust, grim, battle-axe of a mother, efficiently

No one can fathom the depths of the Father’s Divine Will any more than they can fathom His Divine Mercy. But in the same way that Jesus petitions your heart to trust in Divine Mercy, He begs your trust in His Divine Will. Remember, trust is the fruit of love. Therefore, pray for a deep and abiding love of His Divine Will for you. Do not be quick to question circumstances and events of the day, but see the Father’s Will in every present moment. Carry in your heart and upon your lips, the ejaculation, ‘Eternal Father, I trust in Your loving Will for me.’ This little prayer carries with it—peace. He sends an angel to assist you when you believe. This is the way to accept the Divine Will of the Father. Surrender yourself completely to Him. He cannot lead you or provide anything for you outside of His loving Divine Will. Just as Divine Love and Divine Mercy are one, so too, are the Will of the Father and Jesus’ Will.  (read more)

'To be with God it is not necessary to be always in church.  We may make a chapel of our heart, whereto to escape from time to time to talk with Him quietly, humbly and lovingly.... 'Begin then; perhaps He is waiting for a single generous resolution.' Brother Lawrence Painting: The Haymaker,  George Elgar Hicks from The Cloistered Heart

Since October is Mary's month, another devotion to our Lady How to pray the Chaplet of Our Lady of Perpetual Help The Chaplet of Our Lady of Perpetual Help is  prayed on the regular Rosary of Mary. Each decade has one prayer for the larger bead and another prayer that is said 10 times for the smaller beads. It goes as follows: On the larger beads:                                     "O Mother of Perpetual Help, Listen to our pleading souls, You can help us in our needs, Mary, with hope, we call on you." On the smaller beads: "O Mary, help us!  When completing each decade, say: "Mary has helped us, Mary wants to help us, Mary can help us. Mary will help us." After completing the five decades of the Holy Rosary, on each of the 3 small beads, say the  Hail Mary... , this followed by the  Glory Be... . Upon completing the Chaplet, say the following prayer:"We fly to your patronage, O Holy Mother of God. Despise not our petitions in o

There is always time to pray... as I rock my babies to sleep at night, and just before I go to sleep, when I first wake up in the morning, before meals, while washing the dishes,  folding the laundry, weeding the garden, checking the oil in the car, waiting for the bus, in the middle of a traffic jam,  waiting in a long line at the supermarket, or downloading a computer program, when on hold  during a phone call, and waiting for some news, as a crisis suddenly evolves, in the waiting room of the hospital, sitting beside a bedridden loved one, quietly holding their hand, and sometimes, in the middle of the night,  when awakened for some unknown reason... maybe our Lord is telling me  that someone unknown to me needs prayer. En Los Corazones de Jesús y María  @ Camino La Mancha

When the nurse removed the bandage the day after cataract surgery on my right eye, immediately I noticed something strange and beautiful. The walls and medical equipment on the left side of the room were the normal tan tones of the office. The right side of the room was aglow with a brilliant blue-white light. The colors on the walls and medical equipment were dazzling. It seemed I had one foot firmly on the earth and the other one in heaven, at least at the threshold of heaven’s supernatural colors. The doctor explained that the swelling in the right eye with the new lens caused the unreal colors. Okay, but why the brilliant glow surrounding everything within view of the right eye? Whatever the cause, I enjoyed the euphoria. So for several weeks I’ve lived with these phenomena, even when the swelling went down. I could cover my right eye and see the world in all its dull reality. Then I could cover my left eye and see everything as if bathed in the glow of heaven. The line

St Francis Xavier , 1701, Andrea Pozzo [ Web Gallery of Art ] Readings   (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)                                   Readings   (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa) Gospel   Luke 18:1-8  ( Revised StandardVersion – Catholic Edition )  Jesus told his disciples a parable, to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart. He said, "In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor regarded man; and there was a widow in that city who kept coming to him and saying, 'Vindicate me against my adversary.'  "For a while he refused; but afterward he said to himself, 'Though I neither fear God nor regard man, yet because this widow bothers me, I will vindicate her, or she will wear me out by her continual coming.'"  And the Lord said, "Hear what the unrighteous judge says. And will not God