The Faults and Shortcomings of Others that Threaten to Rob Our Peace

This is from the small, but excellent book Searching for and Maintaining Peace: A Small Treatise on Peace of Heart by Father Jacques Phillipe. Our priest made this book available to all of us a few years ago and I am very grateful as it is an excellent meditation on how important peace of heart is in the spiritual life. It is full of practical advice on how to avoid the pitfalls and work toward keeping that most necessary quality of peace in our hearts!

From Father Philippe:

I stated that disquietude, in the face of some evil that threatens or overcomes our own person or those who are dear to us, is the most frequent reason why we lose our interior peace.

And the response: confident abandonment into the Hands of God, Who delivers us from all evil, or Who, if He allows it, gives us the strength to endure it and makes it turn to our advantage.

This response will remain valid for all the other causes for losing our peace, with which we will now interest ourselves and which are specific cases.

Nevertheless, it is good to speak of it because though abandonment may be the sole rule, the practice of abandonment takes diverse forms according to what is at the origin of our troubles and our anxieties.

It often happens that we lose our peace not because suffering affects us or threatens to affect us personally, but rather because of the behavior of an individual person or group of persons who hurt us or preoccupy us.

It is thus something that is not directly ours – but which, nonetheless, concerns us – that is in question: for example, the good of our community, of the church or the salvation of a particular person.

A woman is perhaps distressed because she does not see a much desired conversion of her husband being realized. A superior of a community may lose his sense of peace, because one of his brothers or sisters does the contrary of that which he expects. Or, more simply, in every day life, one becomes irritated, because one close to him behaves in a way that he imagines he should not behave.

How many nervous tensions are due to this type of situation! The response is the same as previously indicated: confidence and abandonment. I must do what occurs to me relative to aiding others to improve themselves, peacefully and tenderly, and put everything else in the Hands of the Lord, Who knows how to draw benefit from all things.

But, relative to this, we would like to express a general principle that is very important in our daily spiritual life which is the point at which we usually stumble in the cases cited above. In addition, its area of application is much larger than the question of patience when confronted with the faults of others.
Here is the principle: not only must we be careful to want and desire good things for their own sake, but also to want and desire them in a way that is good. To be attentive not only to that which we want, but also to the way in which we want them.

In effect, we very frequently sin in this fashion: we want something which is good, and even very good, but we want it in a way that is bad. In order to understand, let us take one of the examples mentioned above.

It is normal that the superior of the community should watch over the sanctity of those in his care. It’s an excellent thing and conforms to the will of God. But if the superior gets angry, irritated or loses his peace over the imperfections or the lack of fervor of his brothers, this is certainly not the Holy Spirit that is animating him.

And we often have this tendency. Because the thing that we want is good, even seeing as desired by God, we feel justified in wanting it with that much more impatience and displeasure if it is not realized. The more a thing seems good to us, the more we are agitated and preoccupied to realize it!

We should, therefore, as I have said, not only verify that the things we want are good in themselves, but also that the manner in which we want them, the disposition of heart in which we want them, are good. That is to say that our wanting must always be caring, peaceful, patient, detached and abandoned to God. It should not be an impatient wanting, hurried, restless, irritated, etc.

In the spiritual life it is often there that our attitude is defective. We are no longer among those who want bad things that are contrary to God. Instead, from now on we want only those things that are good, in conformity with the will of God. But, we want them in a manner that is still not “God’s Way,” that is to say the way of the Holy Spirit, which is caring, peaceful and patient.

We want them in the human way, tense, hurried and discouraged if we do not immediately achieve the desired goal.

All of the Saints insist on telling us that we must moderate our desires, even the best of them. Because, if we desire in the human way that we have described, that will trouble the soul, make it uneasy, destroy its peace and thereby disturb God’s actions in it and in others.

This applies to all things, even to our own sanctification.

How many times do we lose our peace because we find that our sanctification is not progressing rapidly enough, that we still have too many faults. But this does nothing but delay things!

St. Francis de Sales goes so far as to say that “Nothing retards progress in a virtue so much as wanting to acquire it with too much haste!”

To conclude, let us keep this in mind: as far as all our desires and our wishes are concerned, the sign that we are in accordance with truth, that our desire is in accord with the Holy Spirit, is not only that the thing desired is good, it is also that we are at peace.

A desire that causes us to lose peace, even if the thing desired is excellent in itself, is not of God. It is necessary to want and desire, but in a free and detached way in abandoning to God the realization of these desires, as He desires and when He wishes.

To educate our own heart in this sense is of great importance for our spiritual progress. It is God who converts us and causes us to grow, not our nervousness, our impetuosity and our impatience.

“It is difficult for a child to be better than his home environment or for a nation to be superior to the level of its home life. In fulfilling its double purpose – the generation and formation of children – the home becomes a little world in itself, self-sufficient even in its youngest years. It is vital that you, as a mother or father, make of your home a training ground in character-building for your children, who will inherit the world’s problems. Home is a place in which the young grow in harmony with all that is good and noble, where hardship, happiness, and work are shared.” – Father Lawrence G. Lovasik, Catholic Family Handbook http://amzn.to/2sDb6hw (afflink)

Time is something that we do not have a lot of and is gone right when we use it. Many waste time, which is not a virtuous thing to do. What is our goal?

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Month of May, Month of Mary!

Happy Month of May! What an incredible blessing to have a Mother like Mary…a powerful advocate for our needs! Let’s remember throughout the day to think of her, to take her hand and have her lead us through each seemingly unimportant happening….she cares very much!

Divine Intimacy: Meditations on the Interior Life for Every Day of the Liturgical Year

The heart of every Christian turns spontaneously toward his heavenly Mother, with a desire to live in closer intimacy with her and to strengthen the sweet ties which bind him to her. It is a great comfort on our spiritual way, which is often fatiguing and bristling with difficulties, to meet the gentle presence of a mother.

One is so at ease near one’s mother. With her, everything becomes easier; the weary, discouraged heart, disturbed by storms, finds new hope and strength, and continues the journey with fresh courage.

“If the winds of temptation arise,” sings St. Bernard, “if you run into the reefs of trials, look to the star, call upon Mary. In danger, sorrow or perplexity, think of Mary, call upon Mary.”

There are times when the hard road of the “nothing” frightens us, miserable as we are; and then, more then ever, we need her help, the help of our Mother. The Blessed Virgin Mary has, before us, trodden the straight and narrow path which leads to sanctity; before us she has carried the cross, before us she has known the ascents of the spirit through suffering.

Sometimes, perhaps, we do not dare to look at Jesus the God-Man, who because of His divinity seems too far above us; but near Him is Mary, His Mother and our Mother, a privileged creature surely, yet a creature like ourselves, and therefore a model more accessible for our weakness.

Mary comes to meet us during this month, to take us by the hand, to initiate us into the secret of her interior life, which must become the model and norm of our own.

We must consider Mary in the concrete picture of her earthly life. It is a simple, humble picture, which never leaves the framework of the ordinary life common to all mothers; under this aspect, Mary is truly imitable.

Our program for the month of May, then, will be to contemplate the grandeurs of Mary, that we may be stimulated to imitate her virtues.

The mother who holds the Blessed Virgin as her model develops the love and patience which nurture the spiritual and emotional growth of her children. – Fr. George Kelly, The Catholic Family Handbook

The month of May is a great month of devotion to the Blessed Mother. In this Fr.  goes over the Motherhood of God & examines the heresy of Nestorianism that attacked this truth….

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Christ and Women (Part Two) – Fr. Daniel A. Lord

A beautiful meditation on Christ’s love for His mother and for all womankind….

Christ and Women (1)

All Through His Life

Writers have sometimes stated that women had little place in the life of Christ. This is a strange, unintelligible statement utterly without foundation.

Once, the writers argue, when He sat by a well and talked with a Samaritan woman, the Apostles were surprised. The writers forget that the disciples would have been equally surprised had they found Him talking with a Samaritan man. Samaritans were the hated enemies of the of Jews, and with them the Jews had no sort of voluntary communication.

Certainly the Apostles who had accompanied Him so intimately could hardly have been surprised that He showed this needy woman interest and sympathy. They had never seen Him show any woman anything else.

Later on they were to hear Him speak sternly to a pagan woman; but this was to make the faith of an outcast woman shame unbelieving Jewish men. Women walk through the pages of Christ’s life with calm frequency. They are often close to Him, in His company, playing dramatic roles in His life’s story.

They are consistently the recipients of His kindness and His gracious favors. To talk or write as if Christ ignored or avoided or had little dealing with women is simply to leave out or pass over whole sections of the Gospel story. It is utterly to misunderstand Christ.

For women were His loyal followers, His devoted friends, who saw in Him their tactful advocate and courageous protector. Christ’s attitude toward women is just one of the beautiful and consoling things in His character.

We falsify our picture of Christ by talking or writing as if He shunned or positively disliked women.

A World Cruel to Women

What makes His attitude the more notable is its contrast with the attitude toward women that prevailed when He came into the world. The world had been a sad place for women. Pagan slave markets were full of them, and their price was graded to their physical charm or the breadth of their backs for carrying burdens.

They got their value from their ability to please the eye or serve the whim of man, the master. Rome and Greece talked much about their respect for good women, but they saw to it that the life of a good woman was almost that of a slave.

Woman was barred the larger life of her times unless, as was the case especially in the golden age of Greece, she bought liberty at the price of shame.

Courtesans made great places for themselves in public life; good women were almost prisoners in their homes. The lot of a Jewish woman was, of course, immeasurably higher; but even she was the servant, the inferior, whose fate was so completely in the hands of her master that custom had come to permit a husband to divorce her for the crime of an unsatisfactory breakfast.

A lower place in the temple, an inferior seat at table, the task of waiting hand and foot even on her own sons, was regarded as her unquestioned lot. If she fell by some sad fate a victim to man’s pursuing instincts and lost the innocence with which she might purchase dull respectability, there was not the slightest chance of her rising from the mud.

Pagan and Jew alike kept the fallen woman in the gutter. For her there was neither hope nor opportunity for repentance. Men made sin easy for her, but they were unforgiving once she had gratified their cruel passion.

Christ Comes to Womankind

Into this world so hard and merciless to women walked Jesus, with pity in His eyes for all womankind. Was it strange, when we come to think of it, that women should mean so much to Him?

There was only one person in the world to whom He, the God-Man, could properly be said to owe anything. That was the woman Mary, His mother. No human father had given Him what fathers give to the rest of mankind.

His whole body was given Him by His mother. We may be sure that His features were hers; if her hair curled back from her forehead, so, in all probability, did His; even His eyes took their color from hers.

She was His only human parent, and whatever resemblance He bore to any human being was the resemblance He bore to Mary.

During the formative years when He advanced in age, wisdom, and grace, it was intimacy with a woman which shaped His human characteristics. Her voice was the first He heard, and from it He caught, as children always do, her little tricks of speech.

She taught Him all the dear things that Only a mother can teach a son and that put
upon a boy the seal of a mother’s personality. By her side He experienced sorrow, exile, joy, peace, every human emotion.

Naturally His human heart, feeling the burden of His debt to Mary, must have been tender to the whole race of women.

His Debt to a Woman

If Jesus may be said to owe anything to anyone, then surely he owes all to a woman. She paid dearly for the privilege of being his mother. Because she accepted that tremendous responsibility, she experienced the stable and exile in a foreign land.

She gave Him through the years of childhood the patient care with which a mother wraps round her little one. She trained the growing Boy, tasted the poverty that He chose for His lot, the long, tedious separation of His public life, the agony on Calvary.

No woman but can lift her head in proud joy when she remembers that one of her sex gave to the God-Man all that humanly went into the molding of His man’s nature.

And Jesus, who repaid all debts a hundredfold, seems to have repaid his debt to Mary in the kindness and gentleness He showed to all her sisters, the women of the human race.

Perhaps, in addition, Christ brought to earth something of that yearning, almost motherly, with which God regarded His chosen people.

“Can a woman forget her infant, so as not to have pity on the son of her womb?” Isaiah 19:15.

Certainly there was an exquisite tenderness in the tears which He shared over Jerusalem as he compared himself to the mother hen longing to gather her chickens under her wing, and there is a gentleness in His parable of the lost sheep, the prodigal son, and the Good Samaritan.

The son of Mary never forgot that the first and great influence in his life was the influence of His mother, and He brought to every woman that tenderness and gentleness which every good son of every good mother feels toward womankind.

His treatment of them is part payment of His debt to his mother.

“The bone-dry definitions in the catechism are as essential as the recipe for the cake, but if we put them together with imagination and enthusiasm, and add love and experience, then set them afire with the teaching of Christ, His stories, His life, the Old Testament as well as the New, and the lives of the saints, we can make the study of catechism a tremendous adventure.” -Mary Reed Newland, http://amzn.to/2wSJI3wBlessed Mother Graceful Religious Earring Sets…Handcrafted, Hypoallergenic. Available here.

Drawing on the experience of dozens of saints, Fr. Plus explains sure ways we can recollect ourselves before prayer so that once we begin to pray, our prayers will be richer and more productive; he teaches us how to practice interior silence habitually, even in the rush and noise of the world; and he explains each of the kinds of prayer and shows when we should and should not employ each.

We all pray, but few of us pray well. And although that’s troubling, few of us have found a spiritual director capable of leading us further along the path of prayer.

Fr. Raoul Plus, S.J., is such a director, and reading this little book about the four types of prayer will be for you like hearing the voice of the wise and gentle counsellor you long for but can’t find: one who knows your soul well and understands its needs.

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Christ and Women- Fr. Daniel A. Lord (Part One)

This is very beautiful and touches upon the depths of a woman’s soul and the loneliness within. We are reminded that our husbands cannot fill our every need and longing…they are human, too, and have their own battles to fight…

Painting by Gregory Frank Harris

by Father Daniel A. Lord, 1950’s

The loneliest thing in all the world is a woman’s heart. Human hearts are all, it is true, doomed through life to a certain amount of loneliness. Separated from the rest of the world by a thin but impenetrable wall of flesh, their deepest emotions, their moments of supreme exultation and crushing grief cannot really be shared by anyone.

We humans may express fluently enough our surface feelings, those momentary enthusiasms or joys; but the things that are of deepest concern remain for the most part locked forever unuttered in our secret hearts.

Great love, great sorrow, great joy leave us inarticulate, silent.

If this be true of all mankind, as it surely is, it is particularly true of women. There have been great men who caught the essence of their loves or sorrows between their two hands and imprisoned it forever in a poem for the whole world to see.

Dramatists have with rough fingers stripped their hearts naked and made them play their parts upon the stage. Musicians have turned inarticulate cries of pain and sorrow into the terrifying harmonies of a great symphony. Men have even, at rare times, dragged out their secret selves to walk through the pages of a diary.

But for every hundred men who have given the world the secrets of their hearts in drama, poetry, novel, or music there has scarcely been one woman who did so.

Men have tried in literature to tell the secret emotions of women’s hearts (as if for a moment they really could divine them); but when one reads these studies of women by men, one wonders if the most brilliant of them has touched ever so lightly even the surface of woman’s soul.

At any rate, self-revelation by a woman is rare in literature and rare in life. Her heart is an unentered sanctuary, a sealed casket, a secret garden guarded from all intrusion.

Whether from shyness or from fear, woman has kept to herself the feelings that concern her most deeply. Her moments of truest emotional significance she keeps hidden in her locked heart. She shares them with no one.

Who Knows Her Heart?

Who but the girl herself knows how she feels as the day of her wedding draws near and she faces the realization that soon she will place her whole happiness in the keeping of one who, for all the fact that he is dear to her, is still almost a stranger?

No nun, as far as I have read or heard, has ever told the emotions that filled her heart when on her vow day she went to meet her invisible Bridegroom.

Men have written beautifully of motherhood and given us the glorious Madonnas: but what mother has really been able to share with a curious world the glory, the deep peace, the sense of blessed accomplishment, the flood of maternal love that suddenly overflowed as her first-born child was laid against her breast?

Priests have attempted, badly in most cases, to describe the emotions that exalted them on the day of their first Mass; but the little mother kneeling there in the first pew and looking up with joyous astonishment as her son brings her God down upon the altar is mutely inarticulate.

And though the world is full of Pietas, statues of the Mother holding her dead Son in her arms, not the mother of Christ nor the bereaved mother of any first-born has told us the anguish of her heart at that terrible moment of loss.

In its sharpest joy and sorrow, in its supreme happiness and grief, the heart of a woman is alone and lonely. Certainly no man understands it—least of all, perhaps, the man who is surest that he does.

No One Who Understands

Yet loneliness is not only a sad, it is a perilous thing. Pent-up emotions are explosive; sometimes they are poisonous. God gave us our instinct for human companionship and our possibilities of social intercourse and confidence just because we all, men and women alike, need someone to share our emotional life and help us bear burdens too heavy for us to bear alone.

Yet with women this outlet is almost always extremely limited.

Man, her natural companion, is, by the very force of his nature, preoccupied, intent on the ruthless fight and hunt that is life.

He must give so much of his physical and mental energy to the crude problems of food, clothes and shelter. Even in the most civilized man there is something of the warrior and hunter going forth at dawn to beat back the enemies that close in about his home and to bring back at the day’s end the food and skins he has gathered.

This is a desperately tiring and engrossing business, and it kills, often enough, the finer responses of his emotions and the keener sympathies and sensibilities of his soul.

Men are frequently so busy with the fight for their own existence and the existence of their dependents that women find them, even the men who tenderly love them, absorbed, abstracted, matter-of-fact, out of touch with the thought and emotions that fill a woman’s life.

The most devoted husband, the most affectionate son, the most loyal brother is still the hunter and fighter of the family; and hunting and fighting, even in their very civilized forms, do not fit a man to be consistently gentle, understanding, or sympathetic where a woman’s emotions are concerned.

Besides, about a woman’s heart God has placed as a protective armor her natural modesty and reticence. She draws back instinctively from giving her real confidences.

Men will, she feels, be bored by them. Some men will be cruel enough to take advantage of them. Her sad experience has made her wonder just how far she is safe in trusting not merely the casual stranger but even the close but thus far untested friend.
Can Any Man Satisfy?

“Is there anywhere in the world,” women have asked from the depths of their lonely hearts, “anyone who will give us the sympathy, understanding, and response that we crave?”

That question has been at the back of all the yearning for romance that fills a woman’s life, a yearning that does not die from the dawn of girlhood to the golden glow of far maturity.

Its answer would be, of course, the perfect man, who could receive confidences without abusing them, understand scarcely understood hearts without troubling them, give affection without presumption, strength tempered with gentleness, and a sympathy that could be accepted with safety.

The unceasing search of a woman’s lonely heart is for the ideal man. Is there such a man? For a long period in the history of the world there was not.

Now, thank God, there is—the man to whom women turn trustingly, who understands them better than they understand themselves, who fulfills in every detail the ideal which women carry in their hearts, who is strong but kind, heroic but gentle, never impatient, never abstracted or self-centered, who knows women so thoroughly that they hardly need to tell Him their secrets, and who unfailingly solves the problems that they bring to Him —Jesus Christ.

Forgive. “A happy marriage is the union of two good forgivers.” ~ Ruth Bell Graham. This is one of the truest statements ever made. Decide you’re not only going to be his lover – you’re going to be his forgiver. Be quick to forgive and get good at it. You’ll probably have lots of opportunity to practice it. -Lisa Jacobson, 100 Ways to Love Your Husband https://amzn.to/2EkBO3F (afflink)

Lovely gifts! These graceful necklace sets can be worn every day as a reminder of your devotion. Get it blessed and you can use it also as a sacramental.

Available here.

St. Rita

St. Rose of Lima

Here is a marriage blueprint that every woman can follow. Happy marriages do not just happen, they are made. It takes three parties to make a good marriage; the husband, the wife, and the Lord. This book is concerned with helping the woman to become the wife desired and therefore loved that every man worth having wishes to find and keep.<P> This book sold over a quarter of a million copies shortly after its publication in 1951, and it was read by Catholics and non-Catholics alike. It is a practical manual. It should be read by every woman considering entering the matrimonial state and also by those women who are already married. It can also be read by men who may wish to see what a real challenge it is for a woman to live up to their expectations and how grateful they should be if they are blessed to find the woman of their desires…

Armed with Barbeaus wisdom, you’ll grow closer to your wife and to your children, while deepening your love for God. You’ll be able to lead your family to holiness amidst the troubles and temptations that threaten even the best of families today: infidelity, divorce, materialism, loneliness, and despair.

The Father of the Family makes good fathers and good fathers are the secret to happy homes….

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Live, Instead of Waiting to Live

from Interior Freedom by Father Jacques Philippe

Our present life is always something good, for the Creator has endowed it with a blessing He will never cancel, even though sin has complicated things.

“God saw that it was good,” the Book of Genesis tells us. For God, “seeing” means not merely taking note but actually conferring reality. This fundamental goodness of life is also expressed by Jesus: “Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?”

Sometimes, though, it isn’t worry that causes us to focus on the future, but the hope of something better or happier.

It may be a very specific event, like a reunion with someone we love or coming home after a long, tiring journey.

Or it may be less well-defined: the time when things will go better, circumstances will change, life will be more interesting.

At present, we tell ourselves, we don’t really have a life, but later we will “live life to the full.”

There is nothing wrong with that, but it does contain a certain danger. We may spend our whole lives waiting to live. Thus we risk not fully accepting the reality of our present lives.

Yet, what guarantee is there that we won’t be disappointed when the long-awaited time arrives? Meanwhile we don’t put our hearts sufficiently into today, and so miss graces we should be receiving. Let us live each moment to the full, not worrying about whether time is going quickly or slowly but welcoming everything given us moment by moment.

To live today well we also should remember that God only asks for one thing at a time, never two.

It doesn’t matter whether the job we have in hand is sweeping the kitchen floor or giving a speech to forty thousand people. We must put our hearts into it, simply and calmly, and not try to solve more than one problem at a time.

Even when what we’re doing is genuinely trifling, it’s a mistake to rush through it as though we felt we were wasting our time.

If something, no matter how ordinary, needs to be done and is part of our lives, it’s worth doing for its own sake, and worth putting our hearts into.

LIVING IN THE PRESENT INSTANT:

Be docile and pliable in the hands of God. You know what you must do to achieve this.

Keep yourself at peace and in complete repose, never become upset and never trouble yourself about anything, forget the past, live as though the future does not exist, live for Jesus in every moment that you are living, or, better, live as though you have no life in yourself, but allow Jesus to live in you at His leisure; to walk thus, in all circumstances and in all encounters, without fear or worry as is becoming the children of Jesus and Mary; never think of yourself voluntarily; abandon the care of your soul to Jesus alone, etc.

It is He who takes the soul by force; it belongs to Him. It is therefore up to Him to take care of it because it is His property. Do not fear so much the judgment of such a tender Master.

Generally speaking, banish all fear and replace this feeling with love; in all of this, act gently, sweetly, steadily, without haste, without anger. Act as if you were dead when the need is there.

Walk in this fashion in all graciousness, abandonment and complete confidence. The time of this exile will end and Jesus will belong to us and we to Him.

Then each of our tribulations will be a crown of glory for us that we will place on the head of Jesus, because all glory is His alone.

“Think of the Queen of Heaven and Lady of the World as humble housewife at the same time that she is mother and caretaker of God’s Son. It makes me sigh of tenderness, fills me with goodwill and love for the small and great chores of the home. How fragrant would be the robes that this pure lily washed. How tasty would be the food her delicate hands prepared. From her holy lips, not a whisper, no complaint or claim, only praise and sweet words. A life of worship and continuous obedience, in the freedom of those who choose to love – were she to kneel in prayer or clean the floor.” -Veronica Mendes, A Mulher Forte

Coloring pages for your children. Click on individual picture to get fullsize.

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Unrest When We Have Decisions to Make

How many times in our lives would we just like to receive a letter from Our Lord?! “Just tell me, Lord, and I will do it!“

Searching For and Maintaining Peace by Fr. Jacques Philippe

The last reason that we are going to examine and which frequently causes us to lose our sense of peace is lack of certitude, the troubling of conscience that is experienced when it is necessary to make a decision and we are not able to see clearly. We are afraid to make a mistake that may have disturbing consequences, we are afraid that it may not be the will of the Lord.

Situations of this type can be very painful and certain dilemmas truly agonizing. The general stance of abandonment and confidence of which we have spoken, this approach of putting everything into the hands of God which enable us to avoid “dramatizing” anything (even the consequences that our errors might engender!) will be particularly precious in these situations of incertitude.

We would like, however, to make a few useful remarks for conserving our interior peace when making decisions.

The first thing to say (and this is in complete harmony with what we have said up to this point) is that, faced with an important decision, one of the errors to avoid is that of being excessively hurried or precipitous. A certain deliberation is often necessary in order to properly consider things and to allow our hearts to orient themselves peaceably and gently toward a good solution.

Saint Vincent de Paul made decisions that were presented to him after mature reflection (and above all prayer!), in such a way that some people who were close to him found him too slow to decide. But, one judges a tree by its fruit!

Before making a decision, it is necessary to do what is appropriate to see the situation clearly and not to decide precipitously or arbitrarily. We need to analyze the situation with its different aspects and to consider our motivations in order to decide with a pure heart and not in an effort to serve our personal interest. We need to pray for the light of the Holy Spirit and the grace to act in conformity with the will of God and, if necessary, to ask the advice of people who can enlighten us relative to the decision.

In this regard, we must know that everyone will encounter, above all in the spiritual life, certain situations where one would not have sufficient light, would be incapable of making a necessary discernment or of making a determination in peace, without recourse to a spiritual advisor.

The Lord does not want us to be self-sufficient and, as part of His pedagogy, He permits that sometime we find ourselves in the impossibility of finding enlightenment and peace by ourselves; we cannot receive them except through the intermediary of another person to whom we can open up.

There is, in this opening up of the heart relative to questions that we ask ourselves or dilemmas that we try to solve, a disposition of humility and trust which greatly pleases the Lord and frequently renders harmless the traps that the enemy sets there to deceive or trouble us.

Regarding this interior peace, which is so precious and of which we have spoken so much, we know that at certain moments in our lives we cannot find it by ourselves without the help of someone to whom we can open our souls.

Saint Alphonsus Liguori was an unparalleled director of souls, but with regard to that which concerned his own spiritual life, he was very often incapable of orienting himself without the aid of someone to whom he opened himself and toward whom he was obedient.

Having said that, it is important to know one thing. Whatever the precautions (prayer, reflection, advice) that one uses to obtain enlightenment before making a decision and in order to be sure of doing God’s will (it’s a duty to take these precautions, because we do not have the right, above all in domains of importance, to decide lightly), one will not always receive this light in a clear and unambiguous manner.

Confronted with a specific situation, we ask ourselves (and we must always do this!): “What must I do? What is the Lord’s will?” We will not always have a response!

When we make this effort at discernment and search for God’s will, often the Lord speaks to us in diverse ways and makes us understand in a clear way how we must act. Then we can make our decision in peace.

But, it may happen that the Lord does not respond to us. And this is completely normal. Sometimes, He simply leaves us free and sometimes, for reasons of His own, He does not manifest Himself.

It is good to know this, because it often happens that people, for fear of making a mistake, of not doing the will of God, seek at any price to have an answer.

They increase their reflections, their prayers, they open the Bible ten times looking for a text in order to obtain the desired enlightenment. And all this is troubling and disquieting more than anything else. We do not see things more clearly for all that; we have a text, but we don’t know how to interpret it.

When the Lord leave us thus in incertitude, we must quietly accept it. Rather than wanting to “force things” and torment ourselves unnecessarily because we do not have an evident response, we must follow the principle that Saint Faustina offers us:

When one does not know what is best, one must reflect, consider and take counsel, because one does not have the right to act in incertitude of conscience. In incertitude (if the incertitude remains) one must tell oneself: whatever I do , it will be good, provided that I have the intention to do good.

That which we consider good, God accepts and considers as good. Don’t be chagrined if, after a certain time, you see that these things are not good. God looks at the intention with which we begin and He grants the reward according to this intention. It is a principle that we must follow. (Divine Mercy in My Soul: The Diary of the Servant of God, Sister Faustina Kowalska).

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For the guys: “The husband’s first duty, under God’s service, is to his wife. He must give himself to her as she has left all to follow him. His must be—from his bridal hour to his dying day—one long, uninterrupted, most loving and unstinted service to her. He must, every day that he rises, set her image higher in his heart; reverence her more, seek to have others know her worth better, and show her greater honor.” – Rev. Bernard O’Reilly, True Men as We Need Them, 1894 http://amzn.to/2yWw0j5 (afflink)

Coloring pages for your children…

 

From the Author … Treasures, however great and precious, are never appreciated until examined, counted over, and summed up. Hence it is, dear reader, that by many there is formed no due estimate of the holy and awful Sacrifice of the Mass. Though the greatest treasure which glorifies and enriches the Church of God, it is still a hidden treasure, and known to few. Ah, if this jewel of paradise were but known, who would not give up all things to obtain it! http://amzn.to/2tRWKyn

 

 

 

 

No Mass? Take Heart! The Amazing Efficacy of a Spiritual Communion….

Many of us may not be in a time of life where we can make it to daily Mass. And some of us…even Sunday Mass! Well, take heart! Once you read this you will realize you have, right at your fingertips, the powerful means of growing spiritually….amidst your daily duties!

From Jesus Our Eucharistic Love

Spiritual Communion

Spiritual Communion is the reserve of Eucharistic Life and Love always available for lovers of the Eucharistic Jesus. By means of spiritual Communion, the loving desires of the soul that wants to be united with Jesus, its dear Bridegroom, are satisfied.

Spiritual Communion is a union of love between the soul and Jesus in the Host. This union is spiritual but nonetheless real, more real than the union between the soul and the body, “because the soul lives more where it loves than where it lives,” says St. John of the Cross.

Faith, love, desire

As is evident, spiritual Communion assumes that we have faith in the Real Presence of Jesus in the tabernacle. It implies that we would like sacramental Communion, and it demands a gratitude for Jesus’ gift of this Sacrament.

All this is expressed simply and briefly in the formula of St. Alphonsus: “My Jesus, I believe that You are really present in the most Holy Sacrament. I love You above all things, and I desire to possess You within my soul. Since I cannot now receive You sacramentally, come at least spiritually into my heart. (Pause) I embrace You as being already there and unite myself wholly to You. Never permit me to be separated from You. Amen.”

Spiritual Communion, as St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Alphonsus de’ Liguori teach, produces effects similar to sacramental Communion according to the dispositions with which it is made, the greater or less earnestness with which Jesus is desired, and the greater or less love with which Jesus is welcomed and given due attention.

A special advantage of spiritual Communion is that we can make it as often as we like— even hundreds of times a day— when we like— even late at night— and wherever we like— even in a desert, or in an airplane.

It is fitting to make a spiritual Communion especially when we are attending Holy Mass and cannot receive Our Lord sacramentally. While the priest is receiving his Holy Communion, our soul should share in it by inviting Jesus into our heart. In this way every Holy Mass we hear is a complete one, with Offertory, sacrificial Consecration, and Holy Communion.

It would indeed be a supreme grace, to be implored with all one’s strength, if the desire of the Council of Trent “that all Christians should receive Holy Communion at every Mass they assist at” were in fact soon to be realized in the Church. So doing, anyone able to participate in more Masses every day, will also be able to make more spiritual Communions every day!

The two chalices

Jesus Himself told St. Catherine of Siena in a vision how precious a spiritual Communion is. The Saint was afraid that a spiritual Communion was nothing compared to a sacramental Communion.

In the vision, Our Lord held up two chalices, and said, “In this golden chalice I put your sacramental Communions. In this silver chalice I put your spiritual Communions. Both chalices are quite pleasing to Me.”

And Jesus once said to St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, the Saint so assiduous in directing her burning desires to Him within the tabernacle: “So dear to Me is a soul’s desire to receive Me, that I hasten to it each time it summons Me by its yearnings.”

It is not hard to see how much spiritual Communion has been loved by the saints. Spiritual Communion, in part at least, satisfied their ardent desire to be united to their Beloved.

Jesus Himself said: “Abide in Me and I in you” (Jn. 15: 4). And spiritual Communion helps us stay united to Jesus, even when we are far from a church.

There is no other way to appease the fond yearning consuming the hearts of the saints. “O God, my whole soul longs for You. As a deer for running water, my whole soul thirsts for God” (Ps. 41: 2).

With the loving sigh of a saint, St. Catherine of Genoa exclaimed, “O dear Spouse (of my soul), I so strongly crave the joy of being with You, that it seems to me that if I were dead, I would come to life in order to receive You in Holy Communion.”

Blessed Agatha of the Cross felt such an acute yearning to live always united to Jesus in the Eucharist, that she remarked, “If the confessor had not taught me to make a spiritual Communion, it would have been impossible for me to live.”

For St. Mary Frances of the Five Wounds as well, spiritual Communion provided the only relief from the acute pain she felt when shut up at home far from her beloved Lord, especially when she was not allowed to receive sacramental Communion.

At such times she went out on the terrace of her home and, looking at the church, tearfully sighed, “Happy are they who have received You today in the Blessed Sacrament, O Jesus. Blessed are the walls of the church that guard my Jesus. Blessed are the priests, who are always near Jesus most lovable.” Spiritual Communions alone were able to satisfy her a little.

During the day

Here is one of the counsels which St. Pio of Pietrelcina gave to one of his spiritual daughters: “In the course of the day, when it is not permitted you to do otherwise, call on Jesus, even in the midst of all your occupations, with a resigned sigh of the soul and He will come and will remain always united with your soul by means of His grace and His holy love. Fly with your spirit before the tabernacle, when you cannot stand before it bodily, and there pour out the ardent longings of your soul and embrace the Beloved of souls, even more than if you had been permitted to receive Him sacramentally.”

Let us, too, profit by this great gift. During the times that we suffer trials or feel abandoned, for example, what can be more valuable to us than the union of our Sacramental Lord by means of spiritual Communion?

This holy practice can easily fill our days with acts and sentiments of love, and can make us live in an embrace of love solely conditioned by a renewal so frequent that it seems uninterrupted.

St. Angela Merici was passionately fond of spiritual Communion. Not only did she make it often and exhort others to do it, but she went so far as to make it her daughters’ special heritage, because she wanted them ever after to practice it.

What shall we say of St. Francis de Sales? Does not his whole life seem like a chain of spiritual Communions? He resolved to make a spiritual Communion at least every quarter of an hour.

So, too, St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe even from his youth. A brief page from the spiritual diary of the Ven. Andrew Beltrami, tells us about what is in fact a little program for a life lived in uninterrupted spiritual Communion with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. These are his words: “Wherever I may be I will often think of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. I will fix my thoughts on the holy tabernacle— even when I happen to wake up at night— adoring Him from where I am, calling to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, offering up to Him the action in which I am engaged.

I will install one telegraph cable from my study to the church, another from my bedroom, and a third from our refectory; and as often as I can, I will send messages of love to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.”

What a stream of divine affections must have passed through those precious cables!

 

“We must have a daily habit of prayer; it should be ingrained in us. Morning and Night Prayers, the Rosary and frequent lifting of the mind to God will help us to hear His Voice.The daily habit of prayer leads us to spiritual health. We are more “tuned in” to know what God’s will is in our life, to desire it and to do it. By our habit of prayer we will experience the tranquility and happiness that comes from Him Who sees our efforts and loves us so much! He will give us the peace that passeth all understanding….” – Anne Joachim

Pray, hope, & do not worry. If Our Lord will provide for birds in the sky would He not help us who are made in His image & likeness? Trust in Him. Do not be anxious like the pagans.

A little reminder of the devotion of Divine Mercy along with the teaching of the little flower on having trust in Our Lord.

 

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Self-Pity and the Cross

JESUS IS MADE TO CARRY THE CROSS – Joseph Breig

Those afflicted with self-pity have often debased the concept of “carrying the Cross.” They have made it a sniveling idea. Their sighs and tears and pietistic postures make it appear that they are being terribly put upon, and are bearing dreadful and unfair burdens with fantastic heroism. This sort of thing does indeed invite derision from scoffers like the communists, with their taunts about “pie in the sky” and about religion being the opium of the people.

This is a penalty which true religion has had to pay for its kindness and patience with the weakest and most self-centered of its adherents. And men – that is, men as distinguished from women – must accept a large part of the guilt for this distortion of the noble and manly idea of taking up one’s cross and carrying it courageously and cheerfully.

Far too many men have left religion to women and children; and what result could have been expected but that religion would come to appear feminine and sometimes almost childish? Women and children would not be women and children if they behaved like men. The fault is not theirs; the fault is men’s for not having been religiously manly.

The carrying of the cross, rightly understood, is the manliest idea in the world. In the final analysis, it is the only manly idea. No man is a real man who shirks crosses. But this does not mean that a man – or a woman or a child – should go around with up cast eyes like a plaster saint, making a great show of self-conscious patience under intolerable tribulations. The plain truth is that most of our tribulations are rather easily tolerable if only we will not magnify them out of all proportion with our own theatricals.

The trouble with far too many of us is that we go through life as if we were writing, producing, directing, starring in, and ourselves being the audience for a melodrama about ourselves.

Some people can make a Broadway production out of a headache and a Shakespearean tragedy out of a smashed fender on their automobile. They are victims of self-dramatization and of a frantic sentimentalism.

There are folks who will mourn the loss of a dog as if they had lost their immortal souls. These are the people who, as Chesterton remarked, spell the word dog backward. They make a dog their god; and if the dog dies, they behave as if the light had gone out of the sky and the future had turned to unrelieved despair.

To point this out is not being anti-dog or anti-anything. It is merely one of a thousand handy examples of the exaggeration of an ordinary sorrow into a thing too terrible to be borne.

There are women who will become unfit to live with for weeks if a vase is broken. There are men who are inconsolable if their alma mater loses a football game. There are people who smash what ought to be a happy marriage because the wife wants to sleep instead of getting up for breakfast, or because the husband prefers reading books to dancing.

We could multiply examples endlessly, but what we are talking about is those unfortunate human beings who have never outgrown being spoiled children, who have never learned to come to terms, realistically and good-naturedly, with life as life actually is.

The Christian concept of carrying the Cross is simply a nutshell description of an honest, mature and religious outlook on life. It is a simple fact that even the longest life is short. Even the most atrocious suffering must end. Even the most poignant sorrow is comparatively brief.

The truth is that life and everything in life are merely means to an end, to a purpose, to an achievement. And the achievement is nothing short of an eternity of such happiness as cannot possibly be described because it is far beyond the power of the human mind to realize or to imagine.

When facts like those are firmly grasped and profoundly understood by the soul, then you have a man who is a man, or a woman who is a woman. You have a person who can put everything in a right perspective. You have somebody who is prepared to carry any cross because he knows that he is walking toward a fulfillment that will make everything, in retrospect, seem small.

And this kind of person will not snivel over his crosses. He will not enlarge his crosses in his own mind until they tower like skyscrapers and increase in weight until they crush him.

The manliness, the magnificent manliness, of Christ is little appreciated. Christ knew from the instant of His conception what the climax of His life would be. He knew that his task was to live the most burdened life in all human history, and to die the most sorrowful death.

But never did Christ have one instant of self-pity or self-glorification. He went at the work of living and of redeeming in the way that a real football star goes about the labor of driving toward the goal posts for a touchdown.

The player can see his objective, and it is his objective that is ever uppermost in his mind. He is hardly aware of the bumps and bruises and weariness he endures on his way to the last stripe on the field. And that was the kind of manliness that Christ had.

Christ took up His cross because He had a job to do. He embraced it because it was the way to the eternal glory for which He had been born. And that is the attitude that each of us should have toward the crosses that come our way as the years pass.

Does one of your children die? Well, death is something for which each of us is born; it is a thing that is ever present in every life. What is really important is not the time of death, but the kind of death. Any good death at any time, any death in the love of God, is an everlasting triumph.

Of course you sorrow if a child dies; but you do not, if you are a grownup Christian man or woman, elevate your sorrow into a religion forevermore. You do not make your sorrow a kind of idol to be worshiped each day that you live.

You take up the cross, you carry it manfully, and by your courage and cheerfulness you make it smaller and smaller until it is very light. After all, each passing day, if you have the true view of life, brings you closer to the endless reunion with your child in unthinkable happiness.

It is properly the task of men to make religion a thoroughly manly thing. Oh, religion is womanly, too, and it is childlike. True religion is universal; it embraces every one.

But religion is not what it ought to be unless it is manful also; unless it is firmly embraced and profoundly encompassed by real men who see life honestly and see it whole, and refuse to shrink from it or run away.

Carrying the cross, truly, is nothing else than living bravely with the right motives and the right kind of love of God and fellowmen.

What happened to Veronica’s veil was simply an outward expression of what happened in Veronica’s soul. Are we “Veronica’s” in our everyday life? Do we seek to serve, to encourage, to listen….?

A good Catholic woman learns quickly that to love is to hurt….They go hand in hand. Her life is spent spreading love and gathering crosses. And when God allows her sufferings she understands it is not to do her harm but to gather her into His arms.

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Great reading suggestions on My Book List….

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The Fear of Suffering

Searching for and Maintaining Peace

The other great obstacle to abandoning oneself to Divine providence is the presence of suffering, in our own lives as in the world around us.

Even for those who abandon themselves to Him, God permits suffering; He leaves them wanting of certain things, in a manner sometimes painful.

Think of the poverty in which the family of young Bernadette of Lourdes lived. Isn’t this a contradiction of the words of the Gospel?

No, because the Lord can leave us wanting relative to certain things (sometimes judged indispensable in the eyes of the world), but He never leaves us deprived of what is essential: His presence,His peace and all that is necessary for the complete fulfillment of our lives, according to His plans for us.

If He permits suffering, then it is our strength to believe, as Therese of Lisieux says, that “God does not permit unnecessary suffering.”

In the domain of our personal lives, as in that of the history of the world, we must be convinced, if we want to go to the limits of our Christian faith, that God is sufficiently good and powerful to use whatever evil there may be, as well as any suffering however absurd and unnecessary it may appear to be, in our favor.

We cannot have any mathematical or philosophical certitude of this; it can only be an act of faith. But it is precisely to this act of faith that we are invited by the proclamation of the resurrection of Jesus, understood and received as the definitive victory of God over evil.

Evil is a mystery, a scandal and it will always be so. It is necessary to do what one can to eliminate it, to relieve suffering, but it always remains present in our personal lives, as well as in the world.

Its place in the economy of redemption reveals the wisdom of God, which is not the wisdom of man; it always retains something incomprehensible. …. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts (Isaiah 55:8–9).

At certain moments in life, a Christian is necessarily invited to believe in the contradiction of appearances and to hope against all hope (Romans 4:18). There are inevitably circumstances where we cannot understand the why of God’s activity because it is no longer the wisdom of man, a wisdom within our capacity to understand and explain by human intelligence.

Rather it is Divine Wisdom, mysterious and incomprehensible, that thus intervenes. And happily we cannot always understand! Otherwise, how would it be possible to allow the wisdom of God to freely work according to His designs?

Where would there be room for confidence? It is true that for many things we would not act as God would act! We would not have chosen the folly of the cross as a means of redemption!

But fortunately it is the wisdom of God and not ours that rules all things, because it is infinitely more powerful and more loving and, above all, more merciful than ours.
While the wisdom of God is incomprehensible in its ways, in this sometimes baffling manner in which it acts in us, then let us say that the wisdom of God will also be incomprehensible in those things that it prepares for those who put their hope in it.

For that which it prepares surpasses infinitely in glory and beauty that which we can imagine or conceive: what eye has not seen nor ear heard, what the human heart has not conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him, this God has revealed to us through his Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:9).

The wisdom of man can only produce works on a human level. Only the wisdom of God can realize things divine, and it is to divine heights that it destines us.

This is consequently what must be our strength when faced with the question of evil: not a philosophical response, but the confidence of a child in God, in His love and in His wisdom.
The certitude that now we know that God works in every way for the good of those who love Him and are called in accordance with His plan (Romans 8:28) and the sufferings of the present time simply don’t compare with the glory to come that will be revealed to us (Romans 8:18).

“What grander task can anyone have than that of guiding souls, of training the young? I esteem him who understands how to mold and educate youth more highly than the painter, the sculptor, and every other artist, whoever he may be.” -St. John Chrysostom

As we travel along the road of married life, our hearts become stripped of the the things that we once thought important. We become more aware of reality and appreciate the deeper things of life….the things that point us in the direction of our final home.

Do you need some good reading suggestions? Visit My Book List.

 

A Meditation on St. Joseph

The Year & Our Children: Catholic Family Celebrations for Every Season
Among the responsibilities that came crowding into St. Joseph’s life after he discovered that all innocently he had taken as his betrothed the one who would be Mother of God, that which must have frightened him most, I should think, was that of being “father” to a Child who is God.

It was not that his love was wanting. Joseph had dedicated his life to God. He longed with an ardor like Mary’s for the coming of the Messiah.

A devout Jew felt so keenly the greatness and majesty and unspeakable mystery of God that even Christ, when He called His Apostles, let recognition of His divinity come to them slowly.

To have known unmistakably at the outset would have put such a gulf between them as to make impossible the intimacy He needed with them in order to teach them as He wished. And here was Joseph, having lived a most holy life, deeply recollected, far advanced in prayer – asked to be “father” to the Messiah!

One gasps at this sort of thing. “But I’m afraid … I can’t … I don’t know … I’m not good enough .. . what will I do?” These must have been somewhat his sentiments.

Then the angel said to him, “Do not fear….” and we see that it was God’s will that Joseph be Mary’s husband. He could do what he could do; beyond that, he could do no more. Apparently it did not dawn on this humble man that he could do what God had prepared him to do.

Do not doubt that he had been prepared. St. Joseph did not just happen along during the preparation for the Redemption.

He had been chosen, as Mary; and although he was not given her Immaculate privilege, in every way he was God’s work.

Strangely enough, what God needed for His divine Son was a father, and that was not a role to entrust to just anyone. He was to be father in the everyday sense of the word.

This Boy could not grow up and prepare for His mission out of some bizarre situation where there was no father. There must be nothing irregular. He must have a mother and a father, relatives, a craft, a home, a town – everything ordinary that boys have.

At least they must have the appearance of the ordinary; if they were extraordinary, no one need know – now.

The only answer to the puzzle of how to raise the Child who was God was to raise Him as every Jewish boy was raised: with the help of God, perfectly.

We assume, of course, perfectly. He was God. He was perfect. As though our Lady and St. Joseph were puppets with no will, no judgment, decisions of their own.

She was full of grace; so her will in every matter was perfect. He was full of love of God and dedicated to Him; so with grace his will was perfect, too.

But it is not as though they had no choices to make. Aside from the approval of his marriage, the message to go to Egypt, or the message to return, no divine revelations told Joseph how to father the Christ Child.

He had what all Jewish fathers had as guide: the Law, and that was all. The pattern was given by God: parents have authority over their children; children are bound to respect and obey their parents.

And St. Joseph had, as reservoir to draw on, his own rich personal life with God out of which he drew his wisdom and formed his decisions.

It was the father’s role to decide where they would live, and Joseph had to make this decision a number of times.

He must have learned once and for all on Christmas Eve that it would be up to him to decide.

No angel appeared that night to show them a lodging. It was his role to teach this Boy to pray the prescribed daily prayers, to conduct Him and His mother to synagogue, where He sat with His father, and on pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem to offer sacrifice.

He taught Him His trade and, with it, how to barter honestly, how to fix a just price for his work, how to evaluate wood, a respect for tools, the techniques of a good workman. He taught Him of crops, for almost every Jewish craftsman depended partly on the food he could grow to help support his family.

If we read our Lord’s parables over and see how many of them tell of the works of a man – building, planting, harvesting – we have a clue to the things Joseph must have talked about with Jesus.

And although it was His Mother who formed His interior life as a Child, still there were long hours of meditation and recollection shared by Jesus and Joseph as they worked together in silence, praising God for the wood, for their hands, for the work He sent them, for the barter and monies paid them which “kept the family going.”

If Joseph waited for some sign from this Boy that He could do His growing and learning without any help, it did not come.

He did the things all boys did, but with a graciousness and beauty that must have made Joseph think of Adam before he destroyed the harmony of his nature.

Joseph must have wondered how He would redeem men. He must have watched Him sometimes and wondered when it would begin.

He must have known, suddenly – and then as though he had always known it – that he would never see it.

Again and again, when there was something to learn, some counsel to be sought, this Boy must have come to him as quite the most ordinary boy would, and asked, “Father, do you think I should do it this way, or is it better another way?”

And Joseph, giving his best judgment and the reasons why, must have told him, as all fathers do, of some experience fetched up from his own youth, and afterward thought, “But He knew. He already knew about my boyhood….”

But He gave no sign. Joseph was as fully and wholly and totally obligated to be father to this Child and husband to His Mother as any other Hebrew husband and father.

On the Cross, the Boy, grown to a man, said to St. John, “Behold thy Mother.”

Our present Holy Father has said, “The mother of the Head is the mother of the Body.” Then what of the father?

Pope Leo XIII tells of the father in his Encyclical Quamquam Pluries:

The Divine household, which Joseph governed as with paternal authority, contained the beginnings of the Church. The Virgin most holy is the mother of all Christians since she is the Mother of Jesus and since she gave birth to them on the mount of Calvary amid the unspeakable sufferings of the Redeemer. Jesus is, as it were, the first-born of Christians, who are His brothers by adoption and redemption.

From these considerations we conclude that the blessed Patriarch [Joseph] must regard all the multitude of Christians who constitute the Church as confided to his care in a certain special manner. This is his numberless family, scattered throughout all lands, over which he rules with a sort of paternal authority, because he is the husband of Mary and the father of Jesus Christ. Thus it is conformable to reason and in every way becoming to Blessed Joseph, that as once it was his sacred trust to guard with watchful care the family of Nazareth, no matter what befell, so now, by virtue of his heavenly patronage, he is to turn to protect and to defend the Church of Christ.

With Christ as our Head, we are the Church. We are St. Joseph’s family. Family life was the only life St. Joseph knew. He was not a monk or a hermit or a priest or a bishop. He was a husband and father.

It is significant. The Child was the Priest. The father taught the Child who became High Priest, who offered Himself in sacrifice; who paid for the sins of men.

For all the years He spent with His father, He showed the mark.

He was formed by the father as well as by the mother; Joseph and Mary, husband and wife, father and mother, prepared this Boy for His vocation.

“Holiness means happiness. Holy people are happy people at peace with God, with others, and with themselves.
There is only one requirement. You must do God’s will. This embraces various obligations and gives you corresponding rights and privileges.
This is the lesson of the Holy Family. The will of God must count for everything in our daily lives. Prosaic deeds done for God can lead to spectacular holiness.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were human, intensely human in the best sense of the word. They show us how our lives, too, should be human–truly warm and Godlike.” -Fr. Lovasik

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No words of St. Joseph are recorded In Scripture. In fact. little mention is made of him there. Yet. despite these seeming limitations. the Church nonetheless possesses an indescribably rich knowledge of St. Joseph. This book will astound most readers both with its scope and with its profundity. Based mainly on Scripture, but supported also by Tradition and the depositions of saints. it is a carefully reasoned analysis of the entirety of that great saint’s role in the history of Salvation and the life of the Church. Includes details about his spiritual life and noble lineage; how he was prefigured in the Old Testament; his relationship to Mary and Jesus; why he has been named by Pope Pius IX “The Patron of the Universal Church;” and so forth. Many beautiful insights…..

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