Friday, August 23, 2013

Mother Angelica's Prayer to the Child Jesus

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O miraculous Child Jesus!
I come before Your sacred Image, moved by love and by hope, and 
I beseech You to look mercifully into my troubled heart.
Let Your own tender Love,
always inclined to compassion, mitigate my troubles and alleviate my sufferings.
Take from me if it be Your Will, all unbearable afflictions and
let me never surrender to despair.
Grant me, Dear Child Jesus,
the special grace I ask from You today in all humility and with a loving trust,
and for the sake of Your Sacred Infancy, always hear my prayers.
Be generous with Your aid and consolation, that I may praise You, and the Father and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.

Painting commissioned for Mother M. Angelica, Abbess of Our Lady of the Angels Monestery, Hanceville, Alabama

From a Holy Card sent to me by EWTN.

Pope to consecrate world to Mary's Immaculate Heart

Immaculate Heart of Mary, Sacred Heart Church, Oahu

It is vital that we understand the importance of our Holy Father doing this! Pope Francis will consecrate the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary this Oct. 13 as part of the Marian Day celebration that will involve the statue of Our Lady of the Rosary of Fatima. Read the rest HERE.

Thursday, August 22, 2013

The Queenship of Mary - Total Consecration to Mary:>>...... John J. Cardinal Carberry

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Queen of all Hearts

"...Vatican Council II in no way de-emphasized the place of Mary in the mystery of Christ and of the Church.  To the contrary, the Council has given to the world and to posterity a solid theological treatise on Mary which will be studied for centuries.  Far from de-emphasis, the whole spirit of the chapter on Mary is a spirit of praise, honor and love of Mary.  Clearly, prayerfully, and with sound scriptural and traditional teachings, Mary's role in the Church is placed in true perspective, which is the perspective of Christ.

...For those who love Mary sincerely there will come a day when an interest will be aroused in the consecration of  St. Louis Mary and will prayer and consideration the beauty and the simplicity of it will be unfolded...

...The end object of the devotion is Jesus; first, last and always, as the expression has it:  to Jesus through Mary.

...The more earnestly the devotion is practiced and lived (lived is the word), the more we shall grow in the knowledge and life and love of Jesus, even to the extend that we may fear that we are losing our love for Mary, so preoccupied we may become with Jesus.  However, this is but an illusion.  We are not ceasing to love Mary.  She is gently stepping aside and leading us to  Him who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.
Excerpt from Mary, Queen and Mother, Marian Pastoral Reflections


Wednesday, August 21, 2013

WHY THE DECREASE IN CHRISTIAN POPULATIONS IN THE EAST?


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by Brother John M. Samaha, S.M.
             Christians are becoming an ever smaller minority in the Holy Land countries of Jesus Christ’s time.
            At the beginning of the twentieth century Christians accounted for a quarter of the population in the countries of the Near East and Middle East.  Muslims have been the majority.  One hundred years later in the second decade of the third millennium the number of Christians has decreased to less than five per cent, except in Lebanon.
            Why is the Christian population shrinking in these Muslim-dominated countries?    Researchers in Beirut and in Rome identify three reasons based on their observations.  The causes of shrinking Christian population are demographic changes, emigration, and sterner Islamization.
Demography
            Muslims multiply faster than Christians.  This is due partially because of Muslim polygamy, a fairly common practice in rural areas.
            Another contributing factor is improved hygiene and health care.  Until a half-century ago, before the use of antibiotics and advanced medical care, infant mortality in these areas was higher in Muslim communities than among the more educated Christian families.  Now Muslim families are no longer plagued by that handicap.  
            In the socio-cultural realm, Christians place strong emphasis on the education of their children, and this accounts for a somewhat lower birth rate.  World statistics indicate that groups with a greater educational and cultural achievement, in this case Christians, have fewer children.  Christian families used to average three or four children, and Muslims eight to ten.  The figures are lower now, and the gap continues to grow.
 Emigration
            Worsening social and political factors have caused increased Christian emigration.  Christians occupy an inferior position in Islamic society.  This is stipulated both in the Qur’anand in historical tradition. 
            According to Islam a Christian is one who pays taxes and is tolerated, but in a position subordinate to Muslims.  The Qur’an actually calls for the “humiliation” of Christians (sura IX, verse 29), although the term has been interpreted differently throughout history by various Muslim rulers.  In most, but not all, Muslim countries Christians have been allowed to worship freely, but were subject to diverse humiliations.  In times past they had to cede to Muslims passing by, or travel on foot while Muslims were permitted to ride horses.
            In the modern era Christians in Muslim lands have worked for equal rights.  In fact, in nineteenth century Egypt under Mehmed Ali Pasha, and in Turkey after Ataturk’s revolution of 1923, Christians were trusted with important roles in the modernization of Muslim countries. 
            While some Muslim and Israeli political leaders pay lip service to equal rights for Christians, the reality is often the opposite.
Islamization
            Re-Islamization and intolerance have sprung up again and been re-fueled with the current crisis in the Arab world caused by the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.  In this era it must be understood objectively that Israel was not founded in a just and equitable manner.  For the first time in world history a state was born from nothing at the expense of another people, whose identity was cancelled as its territory was confiscated.  Because of a troubled conscience following the Shoah, the West facilitated the population of a new state with Jews from outside the area, mostly from Europe.  Consequently the Muslim world perceived Israel as a Western and Christian creation.  Unfortunately the identification of “Western” with “Christian” persists in Muslim society.
             Because of their political and military ineptitude against Israel and the West, the Muslim countries became more vengeful and bitter.  With the onset of Nasser’s anti-West regime in Egypt in the 1950’s the flight of Christians began.
            The situation deteriorated for Christians after the 1978 war when they were squeezed from both sides.    
            Further, after the fall of Soviet communism a Muslim fear arose that the West would make Islam its new number one enemy.
             As a result, the flight of Christians from the Holy Land and neighboring countries continues and even increases.  Christian bishops of all persuasions -- Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant --  beg the émigrés to return to their homelands, but to no avail.
                                                                         +++
Additional information for a possible sidebar:
                                    CHRISTIANS IN THE NEAR EAST COUNTRIES
                                    Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon
                                    Year                Percent

                                    1580                8
                                    1882                25
                                    1914                26
                                    1945                19
                                    1995                9

                                    These figures are recognized as quite accurate.
                                   

Monday, August 19, 2013

St. John Eudes - 12 Reasons for Honoring the Heart of Mary


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The following is from St. John Eudes' classical work The Admirable Heart of Mary.


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1.  We ought to honor and love the things that God loves and honors, and through which He is loved and glorified.  Now, after the most adorable Heart of Jesus, there is no heart in heaven or on earth which has so loved and honored God, or has rendered Him so much glory and love, as the most worthy Heart of Mary, the Mother of the Savior.

2.  Who could have possibly describe the ardent flames of love in the incomparable Heart of the Mother of God toward her Beloved Son Jesus?  Count, if you can, all her thoughts, all her words, all her actions, labors, anxieties and vigilance in feeding, clothing, protecting and rearing our divine Savior, and you will count so many reasons obliging us to love and praise her most amiable Heart.

3.  Count also all the thoughts, feelings and affections which filled her motherly Heart with regard to our salvation, and you will cont so many obligations on our part to love and honor Mary.

4.  Picture yourself the means employed by the Mother of mercy to cooperate with her Beloved Son our Savior in the great work of the Redemption of the world, that is, her prayers, fasts, mortifications, tears, sufferings, and her most poignant sacrifice of her dear Son at the foot of the cross, her Heart utterly consumed with love and charity, and you must realize that all these facts are just so many additional obligations on our part to revere and love her most worthy Heart.

5.  The holy name of Mary has always been so highly honored in the Church, that, according to Surius, St. Gerard, Bishop of Pannonia, ordered the people of his diocese to prostrate themselves on the ground at the mention of her holy name.  Blosius reports that in his time it was the universal custom in the Church that, whenever, the holy name of Mary was pronounced, everyone knelt, and all the faithful prayed, sighed and wept with most extraordinary devotion and fervor.  This devotion is not dead, because the feast of the Holy Name of Mary is celebrated in a number of churches, especially in the Order of the Redemption of Captives, where the office of her holy name is recited on all Saturdays not assigned to an office of nine lessons.  If the venerable name of Mary be worthy of such great veneration, what honor should we not render to her Admirable Heart?

6.  Holy Church never ceases to sing daily, in addressing the only Son of Mary, "Blessed is the womb that bore Thee, and the paps that gave Thee suck,"  because we can never sufficiently praise and reverse the consecrated womb in which she bore the Son of the eternal Father, nor the blessed breasts at which she nursed Him. What honor and praises should be given to her most worthy Heart?

7.  According to the aspirations of St. Paul, the hearts of the faithful become the abodes and dwellings of Jesus Christ, and Christ Himself assures us that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit reside in the hearts of all who love God, so who can doubt that the Most Blessed Trinity dwells perpetually in a most admirable and ineffable manner in the virginal Heart of her who is the Daughter of the Father, the Mother of the Son, and the Spouse of the Holy Spirit, Mary who alone loves God more than all other creatures combined?  This being the case, with what devotion should we not honor her immaculate Heart?

8.  If we are indebted to the holy Evangelists for having left us the written records of the life of our Redeemer and the mysteries of our Redemption, how much more do we owe to our most holy Mother for having preserved for us this precious treasure in her maternal Heart?

9.  Is it not we miserable sinners who pierced this most innocent Hart of Mary, at the time of the Passion of the Savior, with countless thousands of shafts of sorrow by our innumerable sins?  How greatly are we obliged, then, to render all the honor within our power in order to make some reparation for the most bitter anguish that we caused her loving Hear to suffer.

10.  The Admirable Heart of Mary is the perfect image of the most divine Heart of Jesus.  It is the pattern and model for our own hears; and all our happiness, perfection and glory consists in striving to transform them into so many living images of the sacred Heart o Mary, just as her holy Heart is a consummate likeness of the adorable Heart of Jesus, Therefore, it is most useful, good and beneficial to exhort Christians to practice devotion to the most august Heart of the Queen of Heaven.  The sovereign devotion is to imitate what we honor, says St. Augustine, so who can fail to perceive that, in encouraging the faithful in devotion to the most eminent virtues that adorn it, to engrave its likeness on their own hearts and to render themselves worthy children of such a Mother?

11.  Not only is the Heart of the Mother of Our Savior the prototype and model of our own hears, but her Heart, after the adorable Heart of Jesus, is also Sovereign Ruler of all the hearts that have been created to love God, since she is Queen of the universe.  For that reason all hearts should look upon and imitate the Heart of Mary as their model but in addition they are obliged to render it all the homage that they owe to it as to their Sovereign.

12.  Finally consider all the attributes and perfections of the incomparable Hart of the Mother of Fair Love, and you must realize that there are just that number of reasons compelling us to praise, honor and love this most praiseworthy and lovable Heart.