Dear Mother of Mercy,
I am dedicating my blog to you. I'm pretty fed up with it and I'm ready to "chuck it". I'm at a loss as to which direction to take it. Let me know what you intend do with it and how it goes. As you know Monday is my cooking day and I will be spending the entire day cooking for the week and then tackling those sewing and ironing projects. I will be off-line but I'm totally okay with you filling in. Lord knows you'll do a much better job than I can and your catechises will be dead on.
Please pray for me and our family dear mother and please consider the Novena we finished on behalf of Elizabeth.
5 comments:
"The smallest act of pure love is of greater value to the Church than all other works united together."
Our Lady appeared to Bernadette 18 times at the grotto of Lourdes and gave her a number of messages. She told her that she wished people to come there in procession and to do penance both for themselves and for others.
Lourdes, through the spring uncovered by Bernadette, became a great centre for pilgrimages for the sick, and was also the scene of many miraculous cures; but it is also an implicit reminder through the messages of Our Lady, and through Bernadette's heroic witness, of the fact that the sufferings of Christ during his crucifixion were an essential part of God's plan for the redemption of mankind.
While Lourdes was becoming ever more famous, Bernadette was hidden in her convent at Nevers and stricken with illness.
One day some visitors asked her if she had heard of the recent wonders of Lourdes.
She answered no.
The visitors couldn't understand this. Bernadette's response was: "You see, my business is to be ill."
She did not become a saint because she saw Our Lady and talked with her.
Bernadette became a saint through her willing acceptance of sickness and suffering.
From her earliest years at Nevers she had been a victim of a tubercular condition of the right knee, but this developed into an abscess in 1877, which left her in constant and agonizing pain. In 1879 she became much weaker, was hardly able to eat and became quite emaciated. She was also tormented by painful sores on all her limbs. On March 28 she was anointed for the fourth and final time, dying on April 16.
Most of the sick who return home from Lourdes are not cured: it is also their "business" to be ill.
Although we often find it hard to believe and even harder to accept, sickness and suffering are very precious, even though suffering is not something that is good in itself.
However, for those with very serious illnesses, it may well be that this is the way the heavenly Father means them to enter eternal life. For some it may well be they are called to be like Bernadette and to suffer with Christ.
There is no other way to heaven except through suffering, whether in this world or in purgatory.
This, of course, means suffering in the broadest sense, and also includes accepting all the inconveniences and problems of daily living.
The key to all this is accepting this suffering with love.
St John of the Cross said in his Spiritual Canticle:
"The smallest act of pure love is of greater value to the Church than all other works united together."
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Saint Michael Come to Our Defense, that was beautiful. I have two older children who are suffering. I am trying to show them the value of suffering. It is not easy. Your quote from St. John of the Cross is beautiful and words to ponder.
Oh Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee.
Dear Mil,
Salutations.
I am certain Mrs. Belinda and the rest of us, her fellow bloggers, will storm Heaven on your behalf; the Lord keep you strong, and grant you the graces necessary to you for His greater glory.
God bless your older sons for their suffering, and patience with their parents.
I entrust this whole matter in the hands of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, “Mother of the Priest par excellence, Our Lord Jesus Christ, and through Him, of all priests in whom she forms her Son”.
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Yes Pablo, I understand. Suffering draws from with in us compassion and love for others which we wouldn't have had otherwise.
Perhaps we would be filled with pity and self righteousness for our brethren instead and those are not traits which are pleasing to God.
I would like to think that as one soul suffers - another soul receives graces towards redemption - through Christ and that Jesus invites us to share in his plan of redemption and even on behalf of our brothers and sisters. I think that's called "The communion of Saints" :)
I am hopeful that when I suffer our Lord applies that to someone else and in any way which he sees fit- spiritually, physically or mentally. I fail when I forget to suffer with love and it was good to be reminded of that.
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Mil, I will pray for your children as well. I was astonished at how blessed our family has been after finishing a Novena to St.Joseph so now I have a list of family members who I will be praying Novenas for.
The Holy Mother really blessed all who read this, what comfort ,what faith..in my own small way I offer up all my disapointments and pains, do the little things as St David and St Therese advise us, The whole is beyond me, let me pray for all those I know and hear of in simple ways and let God's Will Be Done.
He knows what we ask for and what is needful and I am content in His Hands.
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