St. Monica & St. Ambrose ~ Ora Pro Nobis

The Death of St. Monica

Stellar exemplars

I often cry out for Spiritual Direction. I have been praying to find a SD for a few years now. I have even prayed whether or not I should re-do RCIA or some formal Catechesis. Yet, I have not appealed to those who have had so much recourse with God in the past.

Today, on her feast, I plead for the intercession of St. Monica. I also ask that St. Ambrose pray for me... that I may find my direction and ultimately find a true conversion of heart to the Truth.

"There was indeed one thing for which I wished to tarry a little in this life, and that was that I might see you a Catholic before I died. My God hath answered this more than abundantly, so that I see you now made His servant and spurning all earthly happiness. What more am I to do here?" Augustine: Confessions, book 9, chapter 10

Baptism of St. Augustine by St. Ambrose

Friends in high places

Saints and their lives should be an important facet of the faith life of every Catholic. That being said, Catholics are more apt to buy a "Self-help book" at a bookstore than they are in picking up a book on the Lives of Saints.

Interestingly, a couple of posts caught my attention today regarding this issue. I first saw them over at Sancte Pater. V features the post of a priest from England/Michigan Fr. John Boyle, who quotes the Pope:

The Holy Father said that it is important "to have 'travel companions' on the journey of our Christian life: I am thinking of a spiritual director, a confessor, persons with whom we can share the experience of faith, but I am also thinking of the Virgin Mary and of the saints."


"Each one," he said, "should have a saint that is familiar to him, to whom he feels close with prayer and intercession, but also to imitate him or her. Hence, I would like to invite you to know the saints better, beginning with the one whose name you bear, by reading his life, his writings. You can be certain that they will become good guides to love the Lord ever more and valid aids for your human and Christian growth."

Father Boyle expands on this idea, especially when it comes to choosing names for our children.

Many people now do not have names that have any reference to saints. It used to be the case that Christians were given a saint's name or names at Baptism, and would take another saint at Confirmation. But names like 'Autumn', 'Bristol', 'Chelsea' while not being in any way anti-Christian and therefore not contrary to the provisions concerning batismal names contained in the Code of Canon Law, do not, I feel, help children to grow up with the idea of seeking the protection of a particular saint, or seeking to imitate the example of that saint.

If you want to learn more buy a nice book, may I suggest:  Lives of the Saints: For every day of the year

It profits a man nothing to give his whole soul for the world...

I saw this clip again recently, and it came to mind while thinking and praying...

To what do we attach our souls to? Whom do we serve?




And here is the outcome...

Could you do the same? Would you be willing to adhere to your principles even at your own cost?

"...But God's first!"

Time to follow my own advice

Blast from the past

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On May 19th, I made a post about my faith, and its direction. I entitled it "He must increase, I must decrease." For a while I felt like I was living that verse. Then recently, due to the fact that I have been striking out in the job search, and with a still yet uncertain future in terms of where we will be living and working in a month, I have foolishly grabbed the "reins" back from God, and started focusing on how I can figure this situation out. How I can do more "stuff" to help secure my direction, and find my path. What I can do to find a job, create opportunities, and determine my future. What I haven't done is listen to my own advice.

One follows from the other

•·°

I thought that if I just increased the God part in my life, that I wouldn't really have to do the whole decrease thing. I figured that I could tag-team the piloting of my life with God, that way, I could grab the controls incase He let go. Foolish. 

What I didn't realize until tonight is that opportunities can only come when nothing is blocking their path. A friend of mine has been searching for his "career" path since graduation. This person is way more qualified for jobs than I am, and he has been waiting faithfully for a year. He has filled his time and efforts with smaller projects here and there, just to survive, and here I am panicking because I haven't secured anything in the few months since I have been actively looking.

We know how this ends 

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Saints, true followers of the above-mentioned Bible verse, end up in positions they wouldn't have picked for themselves... but their lives, and deaths, are vital to the advancement of the Heavenly Kingdom and the strength of the Ecclesia Militans. Their courage, their acceptance of God's will, their Marian fiat of: "Yes" gives them strength over death... and despair. They acceptance of earthly defeat is simultaneously they acceptance of victory:

Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha - July 14 - Ora Pro Nobis

Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha

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"Lily of the Mohawks"

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Ora Pro Nobis

Want to be a Saint? Ask for suffering.

Sword/Tip (h/t) to Andrea @ The Escape

"If God sends you many sufferings, it is a sign that He has great plans for you and certainly wants to make you a saint. If you desire to become a great saint, ask Him to send you much suffering. To enkindles the fire of divine love, the best wood is that of the cross, which Our Lord used for His great sacrifice of love."

-St. Ignatius Loyola

I am too busy to look this up to make sure this is an actual quote, yes I do that even though I am a blogger.

[Start Rant] In fact, a little tangent rant here... how can journalists not do this? Do you know how many times I read either a major blog, or website, and I can recognize things that either aren't true (in an objective sense) or aren't actually a "quote" by someone. My favorite, is when someone famous quotes someone else famous, and the person writing obviously Googled it real quick, and called that "research." It is frustrating that we pay these peoples salary by continuing to pay for and read their drivel. Now, I am not saying I am the best writer in the world, in fact I am a sorry excuse for one... but no one is paying me to do this. (I will take offers of payment NOT to write though.) [End Rant]

Maybe this is my cross? Maybe I am meant to endure shoddy research, and it will help me become a saint? Heh, probably not. More than likely if God wants to send me suffering it will be in the form of living in some big city against my will to do some humble and important work.

Patron Saint of Lawyers

Saint Thomas More ~ Ora Pro Nobis

Also:

Check out this drawing of St. Thomas More

by: Matthew Alderman over at Shrine of the Holy Whapping

Intercession...

...is something I need right now for a personal intention.

St. Anthony & St. Hubert - ORA PRO NOBIS!

St. George's Feast Day

Sorry for the slow blogging day... I was celebrating St. George's Day by going out and slaying some Dragons!

Well... not really... but you could imagine.

I will most defenitely be updating this weekend. Part of the reason for the slow night last night, and this morning was because of some things I have been talking about, thinking about, and praying about in regards to my parish and the community therein.

St. George ~ Ora Pro Nobis ~ We all have dragons to slay.

For more Info on St. George:
St. George - Catholic Online

I ask for your prayers on this day...

... today I am in need of your prayers.

I would appreciate any extra prayers or spiritual offerings that you could afford to spare. I appreciate it.

I myself will of course be appealing to Our Lady and St. Michael, but in a special way I will be asking Ven. Solanus Casey for his intercession.

March 17 - Happy Saint Jan Sarkander's Day!

... I am polish. So why not celebrate St. Sarkander today?

I have a lot of love for the irish!!! (my wife is Irish, she'd punch me if I didn't say that, or her mom would). I especially love their Smithwick's beer. Heck, I am even wearing green today (just so I don't get punched or pinched... and it might induce a kiss or two from the wife!) But Saint Patrick seems like a rather, dare I say, typical saint? Read his story from Catholic.org:

As a boy of fourteen or so, he was captured during a raiding party and taken to Ireland as a slave to herd and tend sheep.[Do sheep bite?] Ireland at this time was a land of Druids and pagans. He learned the language and practices of the people who held him.

During his captivity, he turned to God in prayer. Patrick's captivity lasted until he was twenty, when he escaped after having a dream from God in which he was told to leave Ireland by going to the coast.[Tight security!] There he found some sailors who took him back to Britian, where he reunited with his family.

He began his studies for the priesthood. He was ordained by St. Germanus, the Bishop of Auxerre, whom he had studied under for years.

Later, Patrick was ordained a bishop, and was sent to take the Gospel to Ireland. He arrived in Ireland March 25, 433, at Slane. One legend says that he met a chieftain of one of the tribes, who tried to kill Patrick. Patrick converted Dichu (the chieftain) after he was unable to move his arm until he became friendly to Patrick.

Patrick preached and converted all of Ireland for 40 years. He worked many miracles and wrote of his love for God in Confessions. After years of living in poverty, traveling and enduring much suffering he died March 17, 461.[Suffering... like watching sheep?]

OK, some pretty cool stuff, I will grant you that. But in the GRAND scheme of things, it is a pretty typical story. I mean, captivity for 6 years... punished by sitting in a field looking at sheep all day?? Not necessarily diggin' out his eyes were they? (See: Saint Lucy) Not only that, but he wasn't even BORN in Ireland. He was a Scott! He didn't die a martyr, so as I said, a relatively middle of the road Saint.

Now, let us look at ANOTHER Saint that has their feast day today: Saint Jan (John) Sarkander - A Polish Saint:

Martyred foe of the Hussites. He was born on December 20 at Skotschau, in Austrian Silesia, and educated at Prague. He was ordained in 1607 and served in various parishes, defending the faith against the Hussites. In 1618, at the start of the Thirty Years’ War, the Protestants seized the local government. Two years later, Jan was taken prisoner at Olmutz and was tried by the Hussites. He was racked and tortured and died on March 17. He was canonized in 1995 by Pope John Paul II.

Ok... so you say not born in Poland right? Wrong. Skotschau or Skczow is in Poland, just at the TIME it was part of Austrian Silesia, in other words 'controlled by.' He defended the faith against HUSSITES, (which were a little more formidable than pagans). He then was part of the Thirty Years War and taken prisoner. [A little more extreme than battling some snakes eh?] He was then tried by the Hussites, racked and tortured to death. THE RACK. A Martyr.

So... Happy Saint Patrick's Day or Sarkander's Day (whichever you choose to celebrate)!!! We can have a St. Patrick vs. St. Sarkander show down: you attack me with shots of whiskey and pints of Guiness, I get to put you on the RACK... I'll even let you go first :)

-Posted by: Joe

The Fellowship...

Frodo: "I wish the Ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened."

Gandalf: "So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides the will of evil. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, in which case you also were meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought."

Sometimes in our journey in life we find ourselves on "the bottom" looking "up." We don't always know how we got there, how we are going to get out, or why God would even let us get to that point. We wonder how we can ever over come evil, and we feel as if the battle is lost. We get the feeling that the only thing we can hang out hat on is the fact that we are still breathing, at least for the moment.

So how do we push on when we face a situation like Frodo? How do we pull ourselves up when all we can think is that we wish we weren't in the position we find ourselves in?

I know that you can guess the answer... it is of course God. But how do we get from despair to God? As Catholics we have a multitude of paths - they are called the Saints. They are models for us to follow that are paradigms of the "despair to God" journey-hero. They have decided that they will take the time given to them by God, and use it FOR God.

We know in these hard times that the will of evil is at work. We feel it, we are affected by it, and we find ourselves succumbing to its force... but we have the choice of how to spend our time, even in the midst of evil - while we face it head on. We must look to the Saints, to our faith, and to the teaching of the Church to guide us, and to encourage us. We have encouragement, and must believe that we are meant for the life we have. God will prepare our way, and with him the burden of our life is light - even when we feel it to be heavy. Dark times always lie ahead in this world... so we must prepare. Our goal and our light is heaven... but we first must accomplish our life.

A good time to prepare ourselves is right now. The time of Christmas, after Advent, and before Lent. We are still reveling in the mystery and joy of Christ's birth and not yet faced with the "desert life" of Lent. Therefore we should ride this wave of joy and commit ourselves to happiness and prayer. We should take the opportunities such as the New Year, the Marian Feast Day, and the time of winter to strengthen our faith and solidify our commitment to God. We are human, as such weak, and therefore susceptible to the wickedness and snares of the Devil. When Lent comes, we face tests - we face the desert where we must encounter not just evil - but ourselves. Therefore we must prepare ourselves so that when Lent arrives, we are conditioned well enough to face the athletic pursuit of the Lenten Season.

So as we come to this time ... let us heed the words of Gandalf and decide for ourselves what we will do with the time given to us. We can rest in the knowledge that it was meant that Christ die on the cross, so we can face Good Friday, the showdown of Lent, with courage - that is very encouraging. Yet, we must prepare ourselves enough to reach Good Friday in such a way that our soul is properly prepared for the Triduum. Let us use this time wisely...