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It has been a little while since we have shown a church as part of our ever popular "before and after" series and today we are very pleased to be able to showcase the work of Stephen S. Cascio at his very own parish of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Kenosha, Wisconsin. (Read more.)
The novena consists of five decades of the Rosary (one set of mysteries) each day for twenty-seven days in petition; then immediately five decades each day for an additional twenty-seven days in thanksgiving, regardless of whether or not the request has been granted yet. So began six novenas of Rosaries — which became known as the 54-day Rosary Novena. To do the novena properly — one must pray the Rosary for 54 consecutive days, without missing a day, and must pray the particular Mystery indicated for that day following the correct sequence. That is, the first day of the novena always begins with the Joyful Mysteries (regardless of what day of the week the novena is started); the second day, the Sorrowful Mysteries are prayed; and the third day of the novena, the Glorious Mysteries are prayed. The fourth day of the novena begins again with the Joyful Mysteries and continues on in that sequence throughout the 54 days of the novena...(Read more.)
It is perhaps no coincidence that the story of Noah's flood is similarly related to a 120 year time period. After the description of the fallen angels/Watchers sinning by engaging in sexual relations with human females given in the Book of Genesis, God said He would destroy the world by the Great Flood in 120 years as a consequence of this abomination:
When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” (Gen 6:1-3)
So Noah similarly had a period of 120 years between a warning being given and the timing of the flood, which parallels the swallowing up of the flood poured out from the mouth of the Dragon in Rev 12. It is again no coincidence that Noah's Ark is traditionally held to have settled on Mount Ararat in Armenia after the occurrence of the flood, since the Armenian people faced one of the greatest persecution of Christians the world has ever known at the start of the period of the unbinding of Satan, which was perpetrated by the Ottoman Turks at the start of the First World War. The Armenian Genocide is also alluded to in the unbinding of the four angels of the Four Angels at the River Euphrates described in Rev 9:13-15, since this location focuses on the Khabur River, which was the exact site on which the Armenian Genocide was centred in the concentration camps of Deir es-Zor. (See the post The Horsemen of the Apocalypse and the Genocides of the 20th Century for more details on the significance of the Armenian Genocide in relation to the period of the unbinding of Satan).
If the millennial day theory discussed by the Early Church Fathers is concerned with providing us with a prophetic dating of the timing of the period of the short time of Satan rather than giving a literal date of creation, this means we can dispense with the Young Earth Creationist theory. A theory which is frequently used by vocal atheists such as Richard Dawkins as fodder for the whole science versus religion debate. (Read more.)
We see that very clearly in the life of the Martins. They were both already seeking holiness prior to their marriage: Louis had spent time in an Augustinian monastery but couldn’t master Latin, and Zélie had sought to become a Sister of Charity, but, because of respiratory difficulties and migraines, was not accepted. God had another holy vocation for both of them in mind.
Zélie prayed that God would give her many children who could become consecrated to God. God blessed them with nine, four of whom died soon after they were divinely consecrated in baptism, while the other five discerned vocations to live out a more intimate form of consecration as religious sisters.
The most famous of their children is St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, who spoke effusively about how she had been blessed with “incomparable parents” and how God had given her “a mother and a father more worthy of heaven than of earth.”
When they were beatified in Lisieux in 2008, Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints emphasized in his homily, “Louis and Zélie understood that they could sanctify themselves not despite marriage but through, in and by marriage, and that their nuptials would be considered as the starting point for a mutual rise.”
He proposed them as models for engaged couples in purity of heart; for married couples in mutual love and honor; for parents as ministers of love and life; for educators in guiding the vocational choices of the young; for widows and widowers in approaching loss with faith; for the dying in peaceful surrender to God, and for every Catholic in living with a missionary spirit. (Read more.)
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Dear Lord, You have given us Sts. Louis and Zelie Martin as examples of holiness and fidelity in family life. Help us to follow their example of openness to Your will, that we might be as ready to follow Your call as they were. Sts. Louis and Zelie Martin, you both desired to give yourself entirely to God in a religious vocation. You loved Him so dearly that you wanted to devote your life to Him in a special way. But God showed you both that His plan for you was different. When you saw that He was calling to you a different vocation than you had planned, you readily gave yourselves to Him in a different way. Pray for me, that I may be as open to God’s will as you were. Help me to be ready to do even the unexpected when God asks me to. Please also pray for (mention your intentions here). Sts. Louis and Zelie Martin, pray for us!
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The mystic number of seven signifies the fullness that overflows into eternity. The duties of our service, nostrae servitutis officia, are but a foretaste of heaven where our adoration and our praise will never cease. The vocation to perpetual adoration is a vocation to heaven on earth. Rightly did the Venerable Mother Caterina Lavizzari repeat, Gesù–Ostia è il nostro Paradiso in terra. This is the phrase that appears on the mementos printed after her death on Christmas day 1931.
Our obligation to the full Divine Office, by day and by night, though it be demanding of our time, of our best energies, and of our sustained attention, is the sweet duty of love. While all the community may not be present for every Hour of the Divine Office, when even a representative nucleus of the community assemble for the praise of God, they do so in communion of mind and heart with the absent brethren. The labours of the absent brethren, or their infirmity, or the duties that under obedience oblige them to be elsewhere, do not break the “charity that is the bond which makes us complete.” (Colossians 3:14). In the Epistle to the Colossians, the Apostles gives us the context of the Opus Dei. He says:
Put ye on therefore, as the elect of God, holy, and beloved, the bowels of mercy, benignity, humility, modesty, patience: bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if any have a complaint against another: even as the Lord hath forgiven you, so do you also. But above all these things have charity, which is the bond of perfection: and let the peace of Christ rejoice in your hearts, wherein also you are called in one body: and be ye thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you abundantly, in all wisdom: teaching and admonishing one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual canticles, singing in grace in your hearts to God. All whatsoever you do in word or in work, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God and the Father by him. (Colossians 3:12–17)(Read more.)
Blessed Elia of St. Clement was born in Bari, 17th January 1901, to deeply Christian parents. At her baptism, she was given the name Theodora, gift of God. In the brief course of her life on earth, she lived up to her name. On 8th April 1920 (then Feast of St. Albert, author of the Carmelite Rule), she entered the Carmel of St. Joseph in Bari. She received the habit on 24th November of the same year, the feast of St John of the Cross. On 8th December 1924, she wrote in her own blood her act of total and definitive offering to the Lord with the vow to embrace the “most perfect”. She died on Christmas day 1927. On 19th December 2005, Pope Benedict XVI signed the Decree of Beatification. She was proclaimed Blessed in Bari Cathedral on 18th March 2006. (Read more.)
