The Power of Prayer

Today began like any other day; alarm goes off, turn on the news, get out of bed, brush teeth, make coffee, get kids ready for school, and get myself off to work. 

Before I left for work I get an email from my nemesis at work; Emily.  Emily is the reason God created prayer.  Once again, she takes a low shot at my solar plexus; figuratively.  At first, I blew my stack; shouted at the computer, slammed the laptop shut, and stamped up the stairs.  My poor kids sometimes think that I’ve flipped my lid.  Today, I’d have to agree with them.

As I drove to work, I realized that the only day being ruined by Emily’s harsh words were mine and my children’s.  My kids have never met the woman and she was ruining their day too, through me!  With a deep sigh, I bowed my head (don’t worry, I was at a red light) and prayed to the Holy Spirit.  ‘Please Lord,’ I asked, ‘give me the grace to put the anger aside.  Please grant me the grace to handle the day with maturity and poise and be able to smile at my co-workers and more importantly, my children.’   Well, He did grant me that grace.  I need to remember how blessed my life is and when the Evil One sends me fiery balls, to duck and just let them pass overhead.

I find that pray as a simple conversation with God, for me, is the most powerful.  Meditative prayer is good too and has its place, but the one-on-one conversation with the Lord is the most rich and full.  How do people without faith make it successfully through a day?  I have faith, and something tough seems to present itself to me mostly every day.  Without faith, there would be no apologies when I’ve done something to hurt someone.  Without faith, there would be no stopping myself from saying biting words.  Without faith, I don’t think I’d have the gumption to get out of bed in the morning.

So here’s my parting prayer for the evening, ‘Thank You, God, for all the blessings you have sent my way.  Please help me to stay humble and see Your way, always.  Amen.’

In Faith,

Deneen

Amazing Saints, Extraordinary Men

This is the week that we in the Catholic church recognize two extraordinary men who became saints; St. Blaise and St. John Bosco. 

St. Blaise was a physician who lived in the 4th century.  While on his death bed from being tortured with wool forks to flay his skin, he prayed for a women’s only son to be healed of a throat ailment that was killing him.  How can a person who is dying from horrible, horrible wounds, think of another’s welfare?  How can you see through that kind of pain?

St. Blaise

St. John Bosco was born into poverty in northern Italy, near Turin, in 1815.  St. John’s father died when he was just a young child.  Without a father to earn food and shelter for a wife and three sons, John Bosco and his brothers had to work as children to keep a roof over their heads and food in their bellies.  Can you imagine being so poor you don’t know when your next meal is coming and from where?  I can’t.  I’ve never been hungry or had to worry about a roof over my head.  St. John Bosco took these life lessons back to the streets when he was a grown man and a priest.  He looked for those boys so like himself when he was young; poor, dirty and seemingly without hope.  He thought of them, instead of himself, and with love and caring, helped them to become contributing members of society. 

St. John Bosco

St. John Bosco is honored on January 31 and St. Blaise on February3.  If you get a chance this week, ask them to pray for you.  Then take their lessons and try it on for size.  Do something sacrificial for another.  Something that really makes you give something up for yourself so that another may have.  Often I want to feel sorry for myself because my days are so full with lots of responsibilities and little sleep.  But it could so easily be worse.  I need to take a step back and realize just how blessed my life has been and is today.  And you know, doing something really, really good for another, without expecting anything in return, just may leave your heart more full than you could have imagined.  This is the lesson that I need to take away from these two great men’s lives.  They were just people, like you and I.  If they can do it, so can we.

Blessings,

Deneen

Our Lady of the Snows

This evening, I was quietly looking out the window at the beautiful snowfall and thinking how clean it made everything look. “What will I write about this evening on my blog?”, I wondered.  As I sat and daydreamed, it came to me, Our Lady of the Snows!  I knew that I had heard of her, but didn’t know much about this particular Marian apparition. I began clicking around the internet and found a website with some great information: http://campus.udayton.edu/mary//meditations/Summ99.html

Our Lady of the Snows
Rev. Matthew R. Mauriello

The most important church in the city of Rome dedicated to Our Lady is the Basilica of Saint Mary Major, erected around the year 352, during the reign of Pope Liberius. (352-366) According to legend, a member of an aristocratic family, John and his wife were childless and prayed that the Blessed Mother might designate an heir to bequeath their wealth. They were favored with a dream in which Our Lady appeared to them on the night of August 4-5. She requested that they build a church in her honor on the Esquiline hill and the sign to accompany this dream is that the exact location would be marked out in snow.

During that hot summer evening, a miraculous snowfall traced the form of the basilica on the hill. Our Lady also appeared to Pope Liberius in a dream that same night so that he too could arrive at the location to see the miraculous snowfall. Many people gathered to see the unusual event of snow glistening in the August sun. Upon awakening, John and his wife rushed to the site and Pope Liberius arrived in solemn procession.

Realizing that the snow marked the exact location of the church, the people staked off the area before the snow melted. The basilica was completed within two years and consecrated by Pope Liberius; that is why it is sometimes referred to as the Basilica Liberiana, after the Pope who consecrated it.

When the Council of Ephesus defined Mary as Theotokos, the God-bearer, in 432 A.D., Pope Sixtus III (432-440) rebuilt and embellished the basilica. From the seventh century onward, it was referred to as St. Mary the Great or Major. The Basilica has also been called Our Lady of the Snows in commemoration of the miraculous snowfall. The imposing facade was built by Pope Eugene III (1145-1153).

Among its great treasures is a painting of the Madonna and Child known as the Salus Populi Romani, the Protectress of the People of Rome, which is attributed to St. Luke. This image had been brought back from the Holy Land by St. Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine, who also located the true cross and other relics of the Passion in Jerusalem. The venerable picture hung in the private chapel of Pope Liberius and he ordered that it be brought to the Basilica for public veneration by the faithful. 

Salus Populi Romani

Throughout the centuries, there has been a special devotion to this famous picture of Our Lady. During the pontificate of Pope St. Gregory the Great (590-604) a plague attacked the people of Rome and the Pope carried the image in procession to pray to their Protectress for an end to the plague. In 1837, Pope Gregory XVI (1830-1846) also carried the image in procession throughout Rome to ask Our Lady for an end to an epidemic of cholera. When it soon ended, the Pontiff solemnly placed crowns of gold and gems on the heads of Mary and the child Jesus on the miraculous image.

Pope Paul V (1605-1621) arranged that a magnificent Chapel be built for the veneration of the image. On January 27, 1613, it was removed from the high altar and placed in the new chapel. The manger from the stable of Bethlehem is venerated under the high altar of the basilica.

The liturgical feast of the Dedication of the Basilica of St. Mary Major is celebrated each year on the fifth of August. On that day, a beautiful custom is kept each year to commemorate the miraculous snowfall. At the conclusion of the Solemn Mass a shower of white rose petals falls from the dome of the Chapel of Our Lady.

The above article appeared in the Fairfield County Catholic January 1996. Reprinted with permission of the author and publisher. 

 

 

 

Basilica of Saint Mary Major

This is the largest church in Rome dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

 

 So, Mary got her church, but did that aristocratic couple, John and his wife, ever get their son or daughter?  I need to do more research!  There’s no surname in this article, so my work is cut out for me.  Wish me luck!  Until then, curl up with a nice warm cup of tea or cocoa, hug the one you love, and enjoy the snow!

 Blessings,

 Deneen

 

March for Life

Today was the annual March for Life in Washington, DC.  It’s the one day that I don’t hate maneuvering around the tourist buses on my way to and from work.  I see all those people and wonder if the suits on the Hill and the judges on the Supreme Court are listening to them.  Shoot, the march didn’t even make the nightly news – except for how it would mess up traffic.

The one thing that I noticed as I was passing the buses, was the age of the marchers.  Many of the them were children, teenagers and young adults.  I was impressed.  To do something like that when you are a teen or in your twenties, something that most of their peers would consider ‘lame’ or ‘narrow-minded’, takes more courage than most have. After all, it’s not en vogue to be Pro-Life! 

But truth be told, I don’t believe Roe vs. Wade will ever be overturned, not in the society we live in.  God is just not welcome here anymore by too many people.  God help all those babies. Wonder who the next undesirable members of society will be?  God help them too.

– Deneen

No inspiration and yet…..

Today is Friday.  It’s been a long week and I just want to wrap it up and become a bit of a veggie for the rest of day and weekend.  Maybe that’s why I just don’t feel any inspiration to post anything of substance today.

And yet…..

…. I don’t get to be a veggie.  Tonight my son has his annual Pinewood Derby race with the Cub Scouts and tomorrow it’s Little League tryouts for the spring season.  There was a time in my life when I was given the title of ‘impatient’ and ‘bad tempered’.  The people who gave me those titles don’t see much of me anymore.  What I’ve become is a Mom – a God-given privilege that I embrace wholeheartedly.  And one that requires a will of iron and patience beyond belief!  LOL!

There are no two people I enjoy spending time with more than my son and daughter.  There are times, when I feel like I do today, not wanting to do anything.  I get home from work and get hugs and kisses from them and well, not much else matters at that point.  All that gives me the little more ‘oomph’ to go and do the extra things they need or want.  When I get home tonight, I will see that we are out of milk {again} and the cats will need to be fed {again}.  I’ll be road weary from the long DC metro area drive home – 1.5 hours on a good day.  We’ll feed the cats, stop at the store to buy another gallon of milk and we’ll be off to the races.  If my son doesn’t win, I’ll have to come home and offer comfort to him and his crushed dreams, help my pre-teen daughter deal with those little headaches and stomach aches that seem to plague her a lot these days and finally drop into bed from sheer exhaustion.  And through it all, I will thank God for every minute!  Tonight, when I lay my head down to sleep, I will say, ‘Thank you, God, for the miracles in my life!’

God Bless!

Deneen

The Pope’s (Pius XII) right hand man – Archbishop Ferrofino

Prelate Who Saved Some 10,000 Jews Dead at 98

Archbishop Ferrofino Assisted Pope Pius XII ROME, 23 DEC. 2010 (ZENIT) An archbishop who saved some 10,000 Jews during the Second World War in his collaboration with Pope Pius XII died Monday. He was 98. Archbishop Giovanni Ferrofino was the former apostolic nuncio to Ecuador and Haiti. He was born in Alessandria, Italy, on Feb. 24, 1912. Gary Krupp, founder of the Pave the Way Foundation, told ZENIT that the archbishop “was perhaps the greatest living eye witness to Pius XII’s life-saving efforts on behalf of Jews interviewed by PTWF.” PTWF is a New York-based foundation, a non-sectarian organization whose mission is to identify and try to eliminate obstacles between religions and to initiate positive gestures in order to improve interreligious relations. It has been working to discover the facts regarding Pius XII and his efforts to help Jews during World War II. “Pius XII sent [Archbishop Ferrofino] to the president of Portugal to request visas for Jews entering Portugal, and then when he was posted as secretary to the nuncio in the Dominican Republic,” Krupp explained. In an interview with PTWF, the archbishop spoke of an occasion of Pope Pius XII’s frustration — he slammed his hand on the table — when the Americans did not help to “save this vibrant community,” speaking of the Jews. When sent to the Dominican Republic in 1939, Archbishop Ferrofino would regularly receive double encrypted telegrams directly from Pope Pius XII, from 1939-1945. He personally decoded these messages and would travel a day and a half with the nuncio, Archbishop Maurilio Silvani, to General Rafael Trujillo, president of the Dominican Republic, and hand deliver the requests “in the name of Pope Pius XII” to General Trujillo. “The Pope would ask for over 800 visas for the Jews,” Krupp explained. “The Vatican was able to gain transatlantic crossing out of Europe. This happened at least twice a year, asking for over 1,600 visas per year for Jews escaping from Portugal and Spain. Archbishop Ferrofino also further helped these refugees to get into Canada, the U.S., Mexico and Cuba. He saved, through Pius XII’s direct instructions, over 10,000 Jews.” Krupp recalled how in January 2008, he went to France to permanently preserve the archbishop’s testimony, with the collaboration of the French PTWF director, Costantino Fiore. In 2010, after Archbishop Ferrofino returned to Italy, the president and director-general of PTWF in Italy, Daniele Costi and Rolando Clementoni, both obtained his written notarized testimony, which is now in the hands of Yad Vashem. The Yad Vashem is the Jewish Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem, which investigates and honors those who were instrumental in saving Jews from the Nazis. On the Net: Archbishop Ferrofino’s interview (with English subtitles): http://www.barhama.com/PAVETHEWAY/ferrofino.html

This article has been selected from the ZENIT Daily Dispatch © Innovative Media, Inc.ZENIT International News Agency Via della Stazione di Ottavia, 95 00165 Rome, Italy www.zenit.org

Amazing and courageous man.  May God grant him eternal peace.

– Deneen

National Vocations Week – January 9 – 15

Last week was National Vocations week here in the United States.  I was unaware of that until today. 

Growing up, I often thought what would it be like to join the convent; be married to Jesus Christ, so to speak.  I had an opportunity when I was in grade school to tour the convent next door.  It was a very large, mysterious place to me.  Full of secrets and deeply quiet and religious.  Two things that stuck in my memory were that the dining room table was fully set with place settings; kept that way all the time we were told, and that the sisters’ bedrooms were called ‘cells’.  An odd term, I thought, since the nuns were there by choice.  There was a small chapel, candles, and many statues meant to invoke the memory of the Saints they represented. (No, Catholics don’t pray to statues, nor do we worship all the saints or Mary, the Mother of God.  We only worship God.  🙂  All the others we ask to pray and intercede for us, just like we’d ask you to pray for us too! )  It was all very enticing to an elementary student.

I found this link to a youtube presentation.  It was published by ForYourVocation.org.  Check it out.  The convent is a lot of what you think it is, AND a lot of what you may not know too! 

http://www.youtube.com/user/ForYourVocation#p/c/0/O-UM1REA7EM

Many Blessings to You!

Deneen

A Pope’s Poetry

The Poetry:

The Negro

My dear brother, it’s you, an immense land I feel where rivers dry up suddenly –and the sun burns the body as the foundry burns ore.

I feel your thoughts like mine;

if they diverge the balance is the same:

in the scales truth and error.

There is joy in weighing thoughts on the same scales, thoughts that differently flicker in your eyes and mine though their substance is the same.

The Pope

John Paul II

Pope John Paul II wrote this piece when he was Karol Cardinal Wojtyla for an African Bishop while both were attending the Second Vatican Council during the fall of 1962.

Since today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in the USA, I thought this poem was a good fit for today’s post.  It shows that Pope John Paul and Dr. King felt similiarly; that all men are created equal, even if they think and look differently from each other. I’ve heard people vilify the late Pope for his conservatism and orthodoxy, however, his mind wasn’t as closed as some like to think.  I don’t think we’ll see a Pope as great as he for a long time to come.  Both men, Dr. King and Pope John Paul, were larger than life and this world is much emptier without them. 

Pope John Paul II ©"L'Osservatore Romano"

God Bless them both.  May we continue to learn from the lessons they taught for many, many years. 

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

My first post – Catholicism Today!

Today is the first day of my new weblog, Catholicism Today.  I wanted to start a forum where, at first, friends and family could discuss the Roman Catholic faith.  I’m interested in all things Catholic; from domestic policy set by the NCCB (National Conference of Catholic Bishops) here in the United States to doctrine being set by the Holy See in Rome.  And everything in between. 

I thought today was a good day to start with honoring a little 9 year old Catholic girl, Christina Green, born on September 11, 2001 and taken from us on January 9, 2011 in a hale of gunfire in Tucson, AZ.  Her funeral was yesterday.  No parent should have to bury their child.  She was special and I believe she was given her angel’s wings as soon as her eyes were closed.  God Bless you, Christina Green.

Let’s turn this tragedy into a lesson.  And always, always pray that these acts of insanity go the way of the dinosaur.

More tomorrow.  Bye for now.

Deneen