Private Vows in The Laity/Spirituality

[Guest]

OUR LADY OF THE ROSARY

"I am Our Lady of The Rosary" (first words to children at Fatima)

Tomorrow, 7th October, is the Memorial of Our Lady of The Rosary.  I first made private vows completely alone on this feast must be over or around 35yrs ago.  Somewhere in what is still unpacked since shifting 8 years ago is a signed paper witnessed by my then pp when I made the vows for life.  I am afraid that dates etc. have little meaning to me very often.  I can only often arrive at a guestimate where memories have shifted into long term memory.

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St Louise de Marillac

Daily Reflection – October 6 - St Vincent de Paul Society FAMVIN

 

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“More is required of us than to go, to come, and to give; our intentions should be pure and thoroughly devoid of self-interest.”
– St. Louise de Marillac

 

[Guest]

St Pope John Paul II on The Rosary (October 2002)

APOSTOLIC LETTER  
ROSARIUM VIRGINIS MARIAE
OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF
JOHN PAUL II
TO THE BISHOPS, CLERGY AND FAITHFUL
ON THE MOST HOLY ROSARY

https://www.ewtn.com/library/PAPALDOC/JP2ROSAR.HTM

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Pope John Paul II changed the world from his knees, says biographer

John Burger | Oct 06, 2017

HERE

“Everything he did was a by-product of his prayer,” he said. “That was true of his work as a priest and bishop in Krakow, and it was true of his ministry as Bishop of Rome. He lived ‘out’ from his prayer.

That’s something all of us can do.”

[Guest]

"Abandonment to Divine Providence" (Jean Pierre de Caussade)

Letter II–The Three Degrees of Virtue

https://www.ecatholic2000.com/providence/prov.shtml

To Sister Marie-Therese de Viomenil (1731).

A general plan of the spiritual combat.

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Excerpt only. "Our principal aim, then, ought to be to fortify continually our will towards virtue, and to overcome our inclination towards evil. We have three means to assure and hasten the success of this undertaking.

• The first is to make great sacrifices to God by overcoming all repugnance in that which costs us the most.
• The second is to make all those daily little sacrifices for which occasions are frequent and continual, and this with a constant generous and universal fidelity.
• The third means and the greatest is prayer, but prayer that is humble, simple, and inspired by the Holy Spirit; because it is He, as St. Paul says, who teaches us to pray and who Prays in us “with unspeakable groanings.” The Publican is an excellent model of prayer: he prayed silently, with deep and humble compunction. The greatest sinners and the most imperfect can pray like him and thus from the depths of their misery will rise by degrees, if they remain faithful, to the highest sanctity."

 

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[Guest]

St Vincent de Paul Society - FAMVIN

Quote of the Day – October 7

 

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"Those suffering from illness in the Company are the blessing of the Company" (XII:26).

 

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“We must know how to dispose of our time with order and method, otherwise nothing is done;                       or if we do work, we get through very little, because the work is not regular.     

                                          Irregularity and inconsistency never obtain a good result.” – St. Vincent de Paul

 

 

[Guest]

CHAT

I just put a post into OpenMic "Why God Allows Suffering".  The final paragraph of that post was:

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I had always wanted to be a nun but was raped at 15yrs old.  I had to let go of my desire for religious life because no one set me straight back then, before Vatican II, that I did not have to be a virgin to enter religious life. 

I did subsequently enter religious life at 16yrs but that is probably a more harrowing tale than my 20 years of psychotic illness, well just as harrowing to me anyway.  As yet, I am not ready to write about it - perhaps, and perhaps only, at some point in the future.  The problem if I write about it is that it involves a specific religious order and I don't want to do that since while that Order has had scandal around it, I know that there were very holy nuns there as well and I know still are.  My experiences in that Order were not sexual nor remotely even connected to the sexual, rather it is was spiritual and emotional.

My college reference stated "a strength of Faith unusual in girls of her age".  I think I was gifted with a very strong Faith because of the journey that lay ahead, or so it seems to me.  But then I am tempted to ask myself, why God doesn't gift such a strong Faith to all who are to have a difficult journey.  As I wrote in my post in Open Mic, I have to let go of that question as only having an answer in Heaven.  If The Lord is ultra kind and really stretches His Mercy to me!

When sudden real misfortune struck me in mental illness, I was confused on all levels including about the nature of God, what my Faith was all about until. it all became psychotic or disconnected from reality - and yet strangely it wasn't.  It has been a very long journey of around 35 years or so of many ups and downs to arrive wherever I am now.  Thank The Lord, I am no longer in the revolving door of psychiatric hospitals etc.  I am able to live a normal type of life - but what of those, Dear Lord, who cannot?  I just have to let go of that question, which does not mean I can let go of knowing something of what they suffer and feel it too on a level, an empathic level.  The thing is, I can move away from that level of suffering in myself, distract myself away from it in some way and get on with my life.  They cannot.

[Guest]

A remarkable story

From Satanic priest to Repentance and Holiness

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HERE

Excerpt only: "Blessed Bartolo Longo was a vile, degenerate, blasphemous Satanic priest. But this is his legacy: blessed, soon canonized.

On October 5, his feast day, let’s ask his intercession for all those who think they’re beyond hope, or that their purity can never be restored and their lives never be made whole, or that they’ve lost their chance at holiness.

May they join the ranks of murderers, addicts, and Satanists whose halos shine undimmed around the throne of the unblemished Lamb of God. Blessed Bartolo Longo, pray for us."

 

 

 

Daily Gospel.org
 Saint Basil (c.330-379), monk and Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, Doctor of the Church
Homily 5 on the Hexaemeron, 6 (SC 26, p.304)
 

Bearing fruit

The Lord continually likens human souls to vines. He says for instance: 'My beloved had a vineyard on a fertile hill” (Is 5,1) and again: “I planted a vineyard and put a hedge round it” (cf Mt 21,33). Clearly it is human souls that he calls his vineyard, and the hedge he has put round them is the security of his commandments and the protection of the angels; for “the angel of the lord will encamp around those who fear him” (Ps 34[33],8). Moreover, by establishing in the Church “apostles in the first place, prophets in the second, and teachers in the third” (1Cor 12,28), he has surrounded us as though by a firmly planted palisade. In addition, the Lord has raised our thoughts to heaven by the examples of saints of past ages. He has kept them from sinking to the earth where they would deserve to be trampled on, and he wills that the bonds of love, like the tendrils of a vine, should attach us to our neighbors and make us rest on them, so that always climbing upward like vines growing on trees, we may reach the loftiest heights.

He also requires that we allow ourselves to be weeded. To be spiritually weeded means to have renounced the worldly ambitions that burdened our hearts. Anyone who has renounced the love of material things and attachment to possessions, or who has come to regard as despicable and deserving of contempt the poor, wretched glory of this world, is like a weeded vine. Freed from the profitless burden of earthly aspirations, that person can breathe again.

Finally, following out the implications of the comparison, we must not run to wood, or, in other words, show off or seek the praise of outsiders. Instead, we must bear fruit by reserving the display of our good works for the true vinedresser (Jn 15,1).

 

Coming out of the 4th century, a homily by a great saint that reminds me of St Therese of Lisieux who embraced the humble way, the hidden way.  She saw the potential for great holiness in the quite ordinary and everyday - and embraced it.

Edited October 8, 2017 by BarbaraTherese

[Guest]

QUOTATIONS

FROM

ST FRANCIS DE SALES

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“The many troubles in your household will tend to your edification, if you strive to bear them all in gentleness, patience, and kindness. Keep this ever before you, and remember constantly that God's loving eyes are upon you amid all these little worries and vexations, watching whether you take them as He would desire. Offer up all such occasions to Him, and if sometimes you are put out, and give way to impatience, do not be discouraged, but make haste to regain your lost composure.”
― Francis de Sales

 

[Guest]

POETRY

OF

ST JOHN OF THE CROSS

"With a Divine Meaning" (1 of 3)

Upheld, and yet without support,

darkness around, no light of day

while I am wholly burned away.

 

My souls is free and set apart

from every created thing,

lifted above itself to sing

of richer life delights the heart.

God is the rock to which I cling.

Now I can tell it as I ought:

the source of all my greatest bliss

to feel, to know that my soul is

upheld, and yet without support.

[Guest]

Quote

 

"Now prayer, in its general notion, may be defined by be an elevation of the mind to God . . . expressing, or at least implying, an entire dependence on Him as the author and fountain of all good, a will and readiness to give Him his due, which is no less than all love, all obedience, adoration, glory and worship, by humbling and annihilating the self and all creatures in His presence; and lastly, a desire and intention to aspire to an union of spirit with Him."
- Augustine Baker -

Shalom Place

Dominican Sisters of Peace

 

 

[Guest]

DAILY GOSPEL.ORG

Origen (c.185-253), priest and theologian
Commentary on the Song of Songs, prologue 2, 26-31 (cf SC 375, p. 111)
 

"Go, and do likewise"

It is written: “Let us love one another, for love is of God,” (1Jn 4:7) and a little later: “God is love” (v.8). In saying this, he shows both that God himself is love and that whoever is of God is also love. But who is of God except the one who says: “I came forth from God and have come into the world”? (Jn 16:28) If God the Father is love then the Son is also love…; the Father and the Son are one and the same in every respect. Fittingly, then, is Christ called Love just as He is called Wisdom and Power and Justice and Word and Truth…

And because God is love and the Son likewise, who is of God, is love, he requires in us something like Himself; so that through this love, this charity which is in Christ Jesus, we may be united to God as it were in a sort of blood relationship through this name of charity; even as Paul, who was already united to Him, said: “Who shall separate us from love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord?” (Rom 8:39).
 

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This charity, however, reckons all as neighbors. So on that account the Savior rebuked someone, who thought that the obligation to behave neighborly did not apply to a righteous soul with regard to one who was sunk in wickedness; and for that same reason he made up the parable which tells how a certain man fell among robbers as he was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho. He blames the priest and the Levite, who passed by when they saw he was half-dead, but he approves the Samaritan who showed mercy. And by means of the reply of the man who questioned him, he said: “Go and do likewise”. By nature, indeed, we are all neighbors of each other; but by the works of charity those who are able to do good make themselves neighbors of those who cannot. Therefore our Savior became neighbor to us and did not pass us by when we were lying “half-dead” because of the “wounds” inflicted on us by robbers

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Shalom Place

Dominican Sisters of Peace

Quote

"There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which every one in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians ever imagine that they are guilty themselves....The essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil; Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind...As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you."
- C. S. (Clive Staples) Lewis, Into The Wardrobe

 

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CHAT

Just considering the above quote from St Bernard.  For probably a lot of us, certainly for me to date, the fight will consist in striving to avoid sin and resist temptation and our victories might be completely hidden personal type victories as with St Therese of Lisieux.  It is never the what we are about, rather it is the why we are about whatever we might be about, no matter how small, no matter how hidden.  Divine Providence provides the circumstances and we provide, with His Grace, our responses to the circumstances.  Or so it all seems to me being a huge fan of Little St Therese.

Today with the walker, my part time carer and I went over to the local shopping centre.  I think I am finding getting around with the walker easier on the limbs the more I do it.  I am also looking into exercise classes for the mature aged with a disability - the problem again becomes I might need a taxi there and back and the funds are running low.  I am now breaking into the budget that offered me a quality of life and not just survival.  It is a bit of a concern, but I know I do not walk alone and that many more indeed suffer far more than I ever will.........or probably could.   The thing, however, about "not able to" is that it is only when one is faced with unable to in actual life (as against imagining it) is that one finds that one can - and because one is not walking alone whether one realises this or not.

Usually after I have been out ye olde limbs play up but tonight I have been spared that because the St Vinnies Minutes really needed to go out urgently - and this was done tonight instead of crashing into an early bed.  Since I have pushed past bed time, I am now at 9.30pm wide awake.   Deo Gratius Laudate Dominum.  Saturday I am going to the Vigil Mass for the first time since I fell and am really looking forward to it - I have really missed celebrating Mass.  Since I get around Bethany here with just a walking stick, I am planning to go up to Holy Communion the same way and will only receive the Sacred Host on the tongue.  I plan too to get to the next Vinnies Meeting in November with only a walking stick all being well.  I am hoping they will still have me despite the fact I cannot go out on visits like all other members, even if I am accepted as a Minute Secretary only on a volunteer basis.  Providing I can use my walker, I will be able to participate in donation Badge Days for Vinnies in local shopping centres.  These are some things I can still do for Vinnies.........if they will have me.

Slowly, I would hope to put a lifestyle in place that will convey a feeling and actuality of usefulness and that takes into account my reduced mobility.  It might take time but that is the objective just at this point.  It has been a long term goal to wear out rather than rust out and that is still in place long term, whatever 'long term' might lay ahead in my journey and whatever might wear me out in the journeying.

If all for some reason fails, it becomes simply a case of "back to the drawing board".

Fiat Voluntas Tua - Deo Gratius Laudate Dominum

Amen - Let it be

 

[Pax17]

I have often thought that the bravest people are the most ordinary people, whose struggle is hidden...those who work three jobs to put food on the table, others who make it to work every day despite anxiety/depression/cancer treatment, etc.

[Guest]

SPOT ON, PAX!  I am convinced we shall see even greater saints in Heaven than we have canonized now and in the future.   It is a great lesson from the life and teachings, canonization, of St Therese of Lisieux - i.e. it is not what one is about,but why one is about whatever one might be about.

1 hour ago, Pax17 said:

I have often thought that the bravest people are the most ordinary people, whose struggle is hidden...those who work three jobs to put food on the table, others who make it to work every day despite anxiety/depression/cancer treatment, etc.

 The above are the hidden trials and sufferings presented by Divine Providence to many who do respond quite heroically.  The hidden and humble greatness and sanctity in our midst.

[Guest]

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.....and MORE CHAT....

Just had a thought I should and would add that at 72yrs of age I am on the far end of my journey, however long "far end" might be.  However, in the early years of my illness I tried to work in my field (secretarial work) despite the illness.  In my well times it was fine, even in the early stages of bipolar though quite difficult, I continued to work in the workforce until I really had to go into hospital.  After that, I would not return to my job.  It was hard enough being the boss's secretary without word going round that I had been in a psychiatric hospital.  That was back in the days when mental illness was regarded as completely disgraceful.  Hence when I got out of hospital, I would look for another job.  My hope back then had been that I would be able to return to good health and get my children back.  It never happened, in fact my mental health situation worsened and I could no longer work.  I had to sell my car, could not afford rental accommodation, I was almost continually ill and abandoned, broke and homeless.  My hopes too were dashed as I knew that because of my situation, I would not be able to get my children back.

When my then husband forced me out of our family home and subsequently divorced me, I was very ill indeed and that lasted for a while in ill health, abandoned, broke and homeless until I rallied somewhat and found work in my old field.  I was then buoyed with hope that I was on the improve.  It unfolded that I was not and that in fact I was headed for the same situation as before - only this time, it was to be more serious health wise meaning more serious in my social circumstances wise..........my hopes I was getting on top of the illness were dashed....... I was to have a 20year journey of serious psychotic mental illness ahead of me...........I even tried temporary work for an agency for a short while, working when I could only since with temporary work one could choose........eventually even that I had to abandon, too ill................

Yep, I can remember the days when and so much more from those days............

Edited October 13, 2017 by BarbaraTherese

[Guest]

In the days of my mobility and a traveller by bus - and back then, it was an hour's journey into the city, I would often be chatting with the person sitting next to me.  I was amazed at the stories and journeys others were travelling.  After a while, I developed a maxim for myself:

You just never know who you might sit next to on the bus

Meaning that the stories and journeys of any person at all I might see or encounter in some way could be amazing, even mind boggling, and to be mindful of it and that no one in life whatsoever at all gets by without suffering and difficulty.  And to stay mindful of that too.

 

[Guest]

....and...even...MORE CHAT...

Here is a bit of a funny one.  On my home phone in those years, I would always put a message on my message bank.  One day the message was "Take care, those are real bullets out there.  Keep your head down and don't stick your chin out - that's my department".  One day a police detective had a reason to ring me but first he said "Do you mind if we put your message on our phones?"  I replied in the affirmative.  But after we hung up, I deleted that message immediately and never used it again.  It occurred to me then just how much that message would apply to our Police and that our Police really do face mortal dangers daily and very real bullets.

What I meant by "real bullets" was not the literal, rather that the words of others can devastate and be cruel.

I had a lot to do with the teenagers in our suburb back in those years and initially the police did not like me one bit, that was to change eventually.  I had told my babies (as I used to call the teenagers) that some things are just what I call "street mischief" - but other things, if I found out, I would be the first to dob them in to the Police and pronto.  I never had to do any dobbing, but we all certainly went through some traumatic experiences at times.

[Guest]

POETRY OF ST JOHN OF THE CROSS

"With a Divine Meaning"

Part 2 of 6 (not 3)

I walk along a shadowed way

of suffering in this life of night,

and yet although I see no light

my sorrow's not without allay:

I know the heavenly life burns bright.

The blinder love is, I can say,

the greater is the life that, flows,

holding the soul in Peace that grows,

darkness around, no light of day.

 

Since Love began to work in me

his touch transforms me, this I know.

I see my soul translucent grow,

for at his pleasure, equally

both good and bad are changed and glow.

Filled with delight to be Love's prey

I feel his flame consume and see

nothing is left for rapidly

the whole of me is burned away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Shalom Place

Dominican Sisters of Peace

"God is our true Friend, who always gives us the counsel and comfort we need. Our danger lies in resisting Him; so it is essential that we acquire the habit of hearkening to His voice, or keeping silence within, and listening so as to lose nothing of what He says to us.

We know well enough how to keep outward silence, and to hush our spoken words, but we know little of interior silence. It consists in hushing our idle, restless, wandering imagination, in quieting the promptings of our worldly minds, and in suppressing the crowd of unprofitable thoughts which excite and disturb the soul."
- François Fénelon