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Opening our hearts and lives to God
Dear Little hearts.
We are on the very threshold of the first Sunday of Lent! Do not allow yourselves to be downcast but be full of joy at all Jesus Christ has done for you!
At this time of grace open your hearts and lives wide open to his grace.
It is a totally mistaken idea to think or act as if this is simply a time of denial of food, it is so so much more… fasting motivated by love can obtain great graces for ourselves and souls, but it is also well to remember that Jesus suffered all his bitter passion that we would know freedom and joy.
Turning back to God should be a joy!!! To epitomize this each day we will ring in our cloister a bell, the JOY BELL! And for that 15 minutes the sisters can do whatever will give them the most joy ! That we proclaim by our lives that God is a God of Joy!
We rejoice that we are redeemed!
Bless you and thank you for all your prayers for the computer change over there is still lot to learn but at least it seems possible today to write to you all.
Lovingly,
Your Poor Clare sisters who in the spirit of Our Holy Father St Francis proclaim our God as a God of joy!
Placing all in the Hands of God
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Do you have sorrow? Let Jesus be Your Remedy
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We can not allow the losses that we endure to control the gifts God has yet to unfold in our lives. Our hope must always be in the Lord!
Our Sorrows must be united to Our Lord and His Heavenly Mother. We must draw peace and hope in the hope Christ has for us all as Christians. Let us place our trust in the one who has suffered more for us.
Let this Lent be something that heals your heart, where the Lord can bring healing and grace to your hearts as the Divine Physician has for you maybe Brother André Marie’s Lenten reflection will bring a blessing to your heart today, please read his reflection below.
Come, Divine Physician
The rich ferial Masses for Lent provide us with much spiritual food for our forty-day sojourn in the desert. Today’s propers focus on Jesus Christ, the divine Physician. The stational Church for today is the Basilica of Saints Cosmas and Damian, the Syrian physicians who were martyred in Rome. In the temple dedicated to these men of medicine, it is fitting to read a passage from the physician-evangelist, St. Luke (4:38-44).
This Gospel relates the story of Our Lord’s miraculous cure of St. Peter’s mother-in-law, who suffered from a fever. In a reading for today’s office of Matins, St. Ambrose says, “Our fever is avarice; our fever is caprice; our fever is luxury; our fever is ambition; our fever is inclination to anger.” The Milanese Doctor of the Church is telling us that our inner ills of vice, malice, and disordered passion are sicknesses that Jesus can cure. This is a beautiful application of the “tropological” or moral sense of Holy Scripture.
Being Catholic: New blog for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati
I am excited to announce a new blog launched Ash Wednesday for the Archdiocese of Cincinnati.
Being Catholic: Discovering our Faith, Living our Faith, Expressing our Faith
can be found at www.being-catholic.org
In addition to the blog, we have a facebook fan page which can be found at www.facebook.com/BeingCatholicCincinnati
and a Twitter account that can found at http://twitter.com/BeingRC_Cinci
I would be very grateful if you visited the site, and shared it with your friends and colleagues.
God bless you all!
Sean Ater
sater@catholiccincinnati.org
513-421-3131
http://www.catholiccincinnati.org/being-catholic/
Professing the faith-being Catholic-is a rich and complex thing. People who have been Catholics all their lives still find themselves discovering new depths in their faith, and people who become Catholic in adulthood often find themselves moving into a new world in which things previously familiar take on a whole new light and meaning. Those who profess the Catholic faith have a particular mindset, which I like to call “thinking Catholic.” It is a mindset that includes attitudes about the world, about the people around them, about possessions, prayer and spiritual maturity that all grow …
Lenten Reflection
Today’s note from the Poor Clare Colettines TMD:
“The life of a Christian is nothing but a perpetual struggle against self; there is no flowering of the soul to the beauty of its perfection except at the price of pain.”- Padre Pio
Let us rejoice for we are all being formed into a new creation! – This is a time of joy, a time of potential growth! Let us Abide in Him and allow Him to abide in us- a blessed, blessed Lent.
We all know from experience that this statement of Saint Padre Pio is so true. Our whole Christian journey is a journey from our will into that of Gods. We think that we know what is best for us and we try to seize it, but the God who loves, allows us to see by his grace that the better way… the way is HIS.
We are born self-orientated, self-centered, and the pilgrimage is to grow, to leave self behind and seek the other, seek God, and the welfare of his children.
We will ‘die’ many times before we die, the process is painful, but nothing can replace the deep peace we come to know when we are living in his sweet will.
Ash Wednesday 2012
Don’t miss it!
Forgiveness
Forgiveness—the key to healing
It’s probably true to say that most of us have been hurt in someway in our childhood. Too often we remain, to a greater extent, bound and oppressed by the resulting negative emotions and feelings from the past. These arise from our memory of the hurts that may be stored in our conscious or subconscious. So we have difficulty in living in peace with ourselves; and when we marry we may both bring this “baggage” of anxiety, rejection, anger, inferiority or low self-image into our relationship, with often disastrous results, and probably without knowing why. Continue here…
© Tony & Betty Dady
Further reading:
“Hidden Springs to Healing” Sr. M. Usha
“Marriage a Beautiful Covenant between God, Man and Woman”
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Let us not set aside what God has planned for us, a perfect gift of love.
THE EFFECTS OF THE SACRAMENT OF MATRIMONY
1638 “From a valid marriage arises a bond between the spouses which by its very nature is perpetual and exclusive; furthermore, in a Christian marriage the spouses are strengthened and, as it were, consecrated for the duties and the dignity of their state by a special sacrament.”
The marriage bond
1639 The consent by which the spouses mutually give and receive one another is sealed by God himself. From their covenant arises “an institution, confirmed by the divine law, . . . even in the eyes of society.” The covenant between the spouses is integrated into God’s covenant with man: “Authentic married love is caught up into divine love.”
1640 Thus the marriage bond has been established by God himself in such a way that a marriage concluded and consummated between baptized persons can never be dissolved. This bond, which results from the free human act of the spouses and their consummation of the marriage, is a reality, henceforth irrevocable, and gives rise to a covenant guaranteed by God’s fidelity. The Church does not have the power to contravene this disposition of divine wisdom.
The grace of the sacrament of Matrimony
1641 “By reason of their state in life and of their order, [Christian spouses] have their own special gifts in the People of God.” This grace proper to the sacrament of Matrimony is intended to perfect the couple’s love and to strengthen their indissoluble unity. By this grace they “help one another to attain holiness in their married life and in welcoming and educating their children.”
1642 Christ is the source of this grace. “Just as of old God encountered his people with a covenant of love and fidelity, so our Savior, the spouse of the Church, now encounters Christian spouses through the sacrament of Matrimony.” Christ dwells with them, gives them the strength to take up their crosses and so follow him, to rise again after they have fallen, to forgive one another, to bear one another’s burdens, to “be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ,”[148] and to love one another with supernatural, tender, and fruitful love. In the joys of their love and family life he gives them here on earth a foretaste of the wedding feast of the Lamb: How can I ever express the happiness of a marriage joined by the Church, strengthened by an offering, sealed by a blessing, announced by angels, and ratified by the Father? . . How wonderful the bond between two believers, now one in hope, one in desire, one in discipline, one in the same service! They are both children of one Father and servants of the same Master, undivided in spirit and flesh, truly two in one flesh. Where the flesh is one, one also is the spirit.
Resource: Catechism of the Catholic Church
Saint Brigid of Kildare
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Daughter of Dubtach, pagan Scottish king of Leinster, and Brocca, a Christian Pictish slave who had been baptized by Saint Patrick. Just before Brigid’s birth, her mother was sold to a Druid landowner. Brigid remained with her mother till she was old enough to serve her legal owner Dubtach, her father.
She grew up marked by her high spirits and tender heart, and as a child, she heard Saint Patrick preach, which she never forgot. She could not bear to see anyone hungry or cold, and to help them, often gave away things that were Dubtach’s. When Dubtach protested, she replied that “Christ dwelt in every creature”. Dubtach tried to sell her to the King of Leinster, and while they bargained, she gave a treasured sword of her father‘s to a leper. Dubtach was about to strike her when Brigid explained she had given the sword to God through the leper, because of its great value. The King, a Christian, forbade Dubtach to strike her, saying “Her merit before God is greater than ours”. Dubtach solved this domestic problem by giving Brigid her freedom.
Brigid’s aged mother was in charge of her master’s dairy. Brigid took charge ,and often gave away the produce. But the dairy prospered under her (hence her patronage of milk maids, dairy workers, cattle, etc.), and the Druid freed Brigid’s mother.
Brigid returned to her father, who arranged a marriage for her with a young bard. Bride refused, and to keep her virginity, went to her Bishop, Saint Mel of Ardagh, and took her first vows. Legend says that she prayed that her beauty be taken from her so no one would seek her hand in marriage; her prayer was granted, and she regained her beauty only after making her vows. Another tale says that when Saint Patrick heard her final vows, he mistakenly used the form for ordaining priests. When told of it he replied, “So be it, my son, she is destined for great things.”
Her first convent started c.468 with seven nuns. At the invitation of bishops, she started convents all over Ireland. She was a great traveller, especially considering the conditions of the time, which led to her patronage of travellers, sailors, etc. Brigid invented the double monastery, the monastery of Kildara, which means Church of the Oak, that she ran on the Liffey river being for both monks and nuns. Saint Conleth became its first bishop; this connection and the installation of a bell that lasted over 1000 years apparently led to her patronage of blacksmiths and those in related fields.
The Apostolate of Hannah's Tears 