Thursday, August 12, 2010

Requiescat In Pace

My dad would have been 61 today.
This is the first birthday of his that we will remember without him.
My mom arrived here in Alaska last night - God is good.

He would have loved being here...
He would love the mountains, the rivers, the moose, the eagles, and he would definitely love the fishing (more so eating the fish).

Most of all, he would love to see and play with his Grand-daughter.
He would say that she is: "So, neat."
They just missed crossing paths; he left this world 10 hours before she entered it.
My wife was "five days late."
God doesn't make mistakes.

Today I will attend daily Mass, and we will pray for the repose of his soul. Just before his second stroke, which left him without the ability to speak, he told me how my faith had inspired him to commit himself to prayer and how he had seriously been thinking about going to confession (which he couldn't do physically). He had been talking with a pastor (the most readily accessible religious person available) but was hoping soon to get right in his head what his heart felt and talk to a priest. I hope that God understood. There are many things we don't understand, but I know that we have hope, faith and love. I have faith and I surely loved. I also have hope.

I pray that God made him a clean heart. Today we will pray in hope. We know not what God knows.



St. James ~ Ora Pro Nobis



Our Lady of Guadalupe ~ Ora Pro Nobis



St. Michael, Archangel ~
Ora Pro Nobis et Defende Nos In Proelio


On the following day, since the task had now become urgent, Judas and his men went to gather up the bodies of the slain and bury them with their kinsmen in their ancestral tombs.
But under the tunic of each of the dead they found amulets sacred to the idols of Jamnia, which the law forbids the Jews to wear. So it was clear to all that this was why these men had been slain.
They all therefore praised the ways of the Lord, the just judge who brings to light the things that are hidden.
Turning to supplication, they prayed that the sinful deed might be fully blotted out. The noble Judas warned the soldiers to keep themselves free from sin, for they had seen with their own eyes what had happened because of the sin of those who had fallen.
He then took up a collection among all his soldiers, amounting to two thousand silver drachmas, which he sent to Jerusalem to provide for an expiatory sacrifice. In doing this he acted in a very excellent and noble way, inasmuch as he had the resurrection of the dead in view;
for if he were not expecting the fallen to rise again, it would have been useless and foolish to pray for them in death.
But if he did this with a view to the splendid reward that awaits those who had gone to rest in godliness, it was a holy and pious thought.
Thus he made atonement for the dead that they might be freed from this sin.
-2 Maccabees 12:39-46

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