 Greetings in Jesus and Mary...
August 6th starts the Novena to Our Lady of the Assumption to be finished on August 14th. This, of course, can be started at any time and finished 9 days later. May we remember all those who have died ahead of us and may we ask Our Blessed Mother to guide all souls back to Jesus who we know have turned away from God during these very trying times in history. Our Lady, Queen of Heaven and Earth, pray for us!!
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 Greetings in Jesus and Mary....
June 16th, Thursday, is Corpus Christi Feast Day! In preparation for this great feast, I am posting a site that has a Novena...which was posted for May 13th Feast Day...but we can use it for Corpus Christi Feast. May we ask Our Lady to help us draw closer to Her Son Jesus in the Most Blessed Sacrament on the Altar. We can also pray the reparation prayers of Fatima and maybe we can add readings on the Holy Eucharist during these days as well. Our Lady of the Most Blessed Sacrament, pray for us!  Greetings in Jesus and Mary...
Today is the Feast of the Annunciation! A great day of love given to us by the Holy Trinity and the cooperation of our good Queen and Mother. Here is a prayer combined from two found in the little booklet - "Communion Devotions in Union with Mary". Once a Consecration has been made, this little booklet helps one to unite his prayers to Our Lady during the Mass and even in private prayer. It is filled with beautiful prayers to help us in our journey - To Jesus through Mary! (link below) "Eternal Father, I thank Thee for having loved and destined Mary to be the Mother of the Redeemer; for having created Her, and from the first moment of Her conception preserved Her from every stain of original sin and adorned Her with immeasurable sanctity. I thank Thee for having prepared Her to be the Most worthy Mother of Thy Only-Begotten Son, and imparting to Her a fullness of grace far surpassing that of all angels and men. I thank Thee for having received Her with body and soul into Heaven and made Her Queen of Heaven and Earth. Grant, I beseech Thee, through Thy infinite goodness, that all men may perfectly know, honor and love Her, that all may serve Her zealously, in order that Thy most holy Name may be all the more honored. Give me the grace also to be inflamed with fire of Divine love, and to love Mary ardently, as Her most devoted children have ever loved Her. O my God, change my heart, give me that sincere contrition, that glowing love which Mary Magdalene possessed when Thou didst say of her, "Many sins are forgiven her because she hath loved much." Give me a noble, heroic heart, a heart ready for all sacrifices to make reparation for the sins committed and to fulfill the sacred promises I have made to Thee. Since I have the happiness of being a child of Mary. I realize what is wanting in me; it is magnanimity in Thy service. How much have I spared self, how often have I sought self.. but henceforth I abandon myself entirely to Thee. Penetrate this heart of mine, so often faithless to Thee; penetrate it with the fire of Thy Divine Love. O Lord, enable me to lead a holy life, to die a happy death, and be united with Thee for all eternity that, through Mary I may forever possess and praise Thee in Thy Kingdom. Amen"  Greetings in Jesus and Mary....
I hope you are well....so many still getting sick. Please pray for all these souls and those who may be going on before us! I found these videos and they are very good at explaining so much of Our Blessed Mother's messages to us to pray and repent and do penance. I hope you benefit as we continue the prayers of the Novena before February 2nd Feast Day! God bless and may Our Lady Queen of Peace, pray for us!  * Hail Mary Most Holy, Beloved Daughter of God the Father
Through the intercession of Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres, grant thy good success to this request (name request)... Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be... Saint Michael, pray for us. * Hail Mary Most Holy, Admirable Mother of God the Son Through the intercession of Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres, grant thy good success to this request (name request) ... Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory be... Saint Gabriel, pray for us. * Hail Mary Most Holy, Most Faithful Spouse of the Holy Ghost Through the intercession of Mother Mariana de Jesus Torres, grant thy good success to this request (name request) ... Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory be... Saint Raphael, pray for us. * Hail Mary Most Holy, Temple and Sacrarium of the Most Holy Trinity. St. Michael, St. Gabriel, St. Raphael, pray for us. Our Lady of Good Success, thou who art the all-powerful intercessor before the Most Holy Trinity, deign to hear and answer my request, so long as it contributes to the salvation of my soul and the glory and exaltation of Holy Mother Church. Hail Holy Queen...  Greetings in Jesus and Mary...
Today is the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6th. For those of us who have been living the Old Carmelite Rule as prescribed on this website and who have made a Promise to try with all sincerity to live it, can renew that Promise today. (below) It is written in the Old Rule that our Promise is to be renewed on the Feast of the Epiphany and on the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. It is our gift to Jesus and Mary on the day of gift giving by the Magi. We are laypersons and at times can not fulfill all the duties of this Rule because of circumstances that may arise in our day. Our duty in our vocation comes first but we must try to make up for what is lacking. This is also a great time to reflect on how I may better live this Rule. If the morning or evening office is difficult - try to place a copy in an easily accessible place in order to make that happen. I wish we had more time to be contemplatives but this crazy world makes it difficult. We must make time for God especially now when so many people are getting sick and dying. Another thing that we may be lacking in is our Fatima Reparation Prayers. Place a laminated copy by the bathroom mirror or a reminder in your car so that we get into the habit of saying these ejaculatory prayers throughout our day. Give God your first fruits of the day. Have a crucifix on your nightstand so that you can pray the Holy Wounds prayer and your consecration prayer as you pop out of bed in the morning. If we can not get to Holy Mass, we should have a memorized Spiritual Communion prayer that we can pray in order to invite Jesus into our souls in an intimate way. Please take time during the beginning days of this new year to review our booklet of Rules and pray to Our Lady to serve Jesus through Her in a very beautiful way this coming new year! God bless!  Greetings in Jesus and Mary....
We are just two days away (Dec 18th) from starting the last week of Advent and we begin with the "O Antiphons". I have articles of these posted in previous years. This is such a beautiful devotion to practice just before Christmas. If this is not enough info on it - please refer to the article written in 2017 during December on the "O Antiphons". Here is an article written by Professor Plinio Correa de Oliveira found on Tradition in Action: Expectation of Our Lady - December 18 by: Prof. Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira December 18 begins the last week of Advent, which the Church calls the Week of Expectation. We are only one week away from the Birth of Our Lord, and the Church imagines the jubilation and hope of Our Lady in expectation of her parturition: she was waiting to admire the Blessed Face of the Son she was generating in her womb. Our Lady had begged God to hasten the coming of the Messiah, God heard her omnipotent prayer, and the Incarnation in fact was anticipated. She was invited to be the Mother of the Word. She accepted, and conceived the Incarnate Word in her womb. In this last week of her gestation, she is waiting with expectation to see the Face of her Son so that she might have a more profound knowledge of His soul and His full personality. She also awaits the salvation of the world that approaches. She sees the hour coming when the glory of God will cease to be offended by the legacy of original sin. The Devil’s reign that dominated for more than 4,000 years is drawing to its end. She senses that the Reign of Our Lord Jesus Christ is near. Only one week is lacking for the birth of the Word that marks the beginning of the end of the reign of the Devil. It was definitely destroyed when Our Lord was immolated on the Cross and the Redemption was consummated. These considerations filled the heart of Our Lady with hope. That is why during this period of waiting she is called Our Lady of the Expectation, Our Lady of the Hope or Our Lady of the O!, since on each of the seven days before Christmas there is an antiphon in the liturgy that the Church attributes to her. All of these antiphons begin with the exclamation – O! – and continue with adapted words of the Old Testament that refer to the birth of Our Lord and His Redemption. These antiphons, called the "Greater Antiphons" or the "O Antiphons," are the following: Antiphon 1: O Wisdom! Thou came forth from the mouth of the Most High and, reaching from beginning to end, Thou ordered all things mightily and sweetly. Come, and teach us the way of prudence. Antiphon 2: O Adonai, Ruler of the House of Israel! Thou appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush and on Mount Sinai gave him Thy law. Come to redeem us with the strength of Thy arm. Antiphon 3: O Root of Jesse! Thou stand as a sign for all peoples; before Thee kings shall keep silence and to Thee all nations shall have recourse. Come, save us, and do not delay. Antiphon 4: O Key of David, Scepter of the House of Israel! Thou doth open and no man closes; Thou doth close and no man opens. Come, and deliver from the chains of prison those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. Antiphon 5: O Rising Dawn, Radiance of the Light eternal and Sun of Justice! Come and enlighten those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. Antiphon 6: O King of the Gentile, the Awaited One of all! Thou are the cornerstone that binds two into one. Come, and save man whom Thou fashioned out of clay. Antiphon 7: O Emmanuel, our King and Lawgiver, the Hope and Salvation of the nations! Come and save us, O Lord our God. Below is a link to a heart warming Marian Antiphon sung during the Advent Season for the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary.....  Greetings in Jesus and Mary...
We are at the last dolor which is the Burial of Jesus. With calm heroism our dear Blessed Mother gave up the treasure which lay across her lap. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus carried the Precious Body, while John and Magdalene followed with Mary to the tomb. Now was the time to carry to His tomb the Body of the rejected King. Her Jesus was now going to be placed in a tomb away from Her and guarded by two Roman soldiers. The pain in Her Heart, how She would have wanted to be entombed with Him….just to be near Him but this was not God’s Will. She was left with the relics of three blood stained nails and a blood stained crown of thorns to embrace, reverence and honor. Her seven dolors are truly known to no one but Jesus and Herself….the intensity will never be known to man. This tomb that Jesus’ Body was brought to had belonged to Joseph of Arimathea and had never been used. The tomb of this new Joseph was to be to Him what the arms of the other Joseph had often been before, His resting place for a while, when Mary had to part from Him. Mary enters the tomb and arranges everything. How gently in Her presence had they cared for and placed Him in the tomb. All genuflected in love before departing from Him. Now, on their journey the Cross lies in their path across Calvary. Below lies the guilty city, indistinct in the murky air, with a few restless lights glancing here and there. There were no words of reproach upon Mary’s lips, no look of reproach in Her eyes. She took it all in, from the temple to the outer gateways of the city. Her nature had been shaken to its center but now she is on her way with St. John to his home. If none can truly tell the sorrow that She bore, so none can tell the holiness that She reached. Her last separation is from that which She herself gave Him….. His Sacred Flesh. Man’s sin and the ever-blessed cruelty of divine love have forced the Mother and the Son asunder, although throughout the life of Christ, there had never been a union such as the Sacred Heart and the Immaculate Heart. All holiness is of course simply a correspondence to grace; but with ordinary men, and even with the saints, there is a great deal of failure, of fluctuation, of falling and then rising again, and consequently of imperfect correspondence to grace. Our self-will, temper, disposition and even sin effects our holiness or lack thereof. Our Lady was tainted with none of this….Her progression of grace was perfect. A single grace from God is a marvelous thing. Theologians have said that one Holy Communion is enough to make a saint. The more one corresponds to grace….the more God will give. All our language of Mary is so unworthy of what She truly is and truly is worthy of. What is important for us and is demonstrated in the City of God by Mother Mary Agreda is this: The view of Mary’s holiness is a purely divine work. It is simply God’s own grace realized, and realized to the utmost, by Her correspondence, and it gives us the true height of Her sanctity, but shows the awesomeness of God and what He is capable of giving us …if we correspond and seek it and remain faithful. Of course, no creature has come close to imitating Mary’s sanctity but many have soared very high such as the Apostles, St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. Catharine of Siena, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Padre Pio and so many many more! It is a sad thing to think that God wants us all saints and yet many die in spiritual infancy even if they die at 80. Some die young such as St. Therese and yet gain such great heights because of their desire and faithfulness. Lessons learned from this dolor…Mary has been an amazing model to us in suffering. She has corresponded perfectly to God’s grace and we must imitate that to the best of our ability. She is the strength example for the entire Church, the Queen of the Apostles and the Mother of all men. May we remain under Her mantle for protection, prayer and guidance. May we thank the Eternal Father for the great gifts of Jesus and Mary. May we remember the sorrow of the seventh dolor when the stone was rolled in front of Jesus’ tomb, after each Benediction when the priest places the Blessed Sacrament back into the tabernacle and locks the door. Let us ask Our Good Mother and Queen to show us the way to perfection and grace….so that we may be pleasing to the Heart of Jesus Who burns with love for us.  Greetings in Jesus and Mary...
The sixth dolor, Jesus Taken Down from the Cross, is the grief Our Lady had to endure after the experience of the Passion and Death of Our Lord. Father Faber states that when the strife is over, then we become conscious of the drain which grief has made upon our strength. It is almost harder to bear than the actual suffering that just occurred. It is like beginning life again at a disadvantage. We seem to be less able to do what it was that we once did. Let us go to the foot of the cross with Mary, John, Mary Magdalene and start with the moments after the death of Our Lord. It was now time for the persecutors to be sure that the three men were actually dead upon their cross. It was customary to break the legs of the crucified to end the suffering and to ensure death. The executioners approached Calvary armed with a strong heavy bar of iron of such weight to speedily fracture the limbs when they are struck. It was a fearful sound for Mary to hear, the dull crashing of the flesh and bone, and the agonizing cries of the sufferers. But when they came to Jesus, they did not break His bones because they saw that He was dead. “These things were done, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, You shall not break a bone of Him.” But there was another Scripture also to be fulfilled, “They shall look on Him whom they pierced.” One of the soldiers drew near, and drove his spear into our Lord’s right side, across His Body, and through His Sacred Heart. Our Lord then shed His last drops of His Most Precious Blood making this one of Mary’s worst sorrows. Life was gone but He was and is the object of Her Love; an unspeakable love of Mary for the Body of Her Son – Who was God. Because this Heart is the Heart that only throbbed with love for all of mankind….the piercing of our Lord with the spear was to our Blessed Mother by far the most awful sacrilege which was in the power of man to perpetrate upon the earth toward its God. Now they fixed the ladder against the Cross and Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, John, Mary Magdalene all participated in this event with Mary. How all of them must have been filled with unspeakable graces to perform such an act. It is claimed that the angels were present and assisted in the complexity of this event. Such as removing the crown from His head which was all so entangled in His hair and embedded into His skull. From the top of the ladder was Joseph who removed it and passed it to Nicodemus and then to John and then to Mary who received it on Her knees and received it with such devotion as no heart but Hers could hold. Next Joseph loosened the nails and they were each passed to Mary. But a greater grief was yet to come. The Body was detached from the Cross. Mary stretches the clean linen cloth over Her arms and hold them out to receive Her Son. Can She bear the weight? Which weight? The sorrow or the Body? He is tenderly placed upon Her lap and there was not a feature of His Blessed Countenance, not a mark upon His Sacred Flesh, which was not at once a sorrow to Her Most Immaculate Heart. It is claimed that Our Lady told St. Bridget that His arms remained outstretched and that it was difficult to bring them down. What a meditation for us….His arms remained outstretched for us. Mary spent many moments tending toward each and every wound and anointed His Most Sacred Body for burial. How can we even imagine the thoughts and prayers of reparation made by Our Mother when She cleansed and annointed His every wound which was inflicted upon Her Son for our sins. Lessons learned… Father Faber states, "The spirit of reparation is a beautiful spirit, a spirt of human beauty fit to wait on the Humanity of our dearest Lord. It is the true Mary’s lap within our souls, in which the Blessed Sacrament should ever lie, the pure white corporal of our most disinterest love!"  Greetings in Jesus and Mary...
The cross reveals man to himself and God to man. When we are experiencing our own sorrows…there is no sight like it. There is something comforting in holding our cross, in kissing our cross, in embracing our cross. And if you are suffering today, as we all are, I advise you to get a good size huggable cross. First have it blessed and each day but especially when you are troubled, pick it up, kiss it and embrace it…maybe even shed tears of joy and sadness. I guarantee you that it is better than paying a therapist a couple hundred dollars! YOU WILL BE COMFORTED! The Cross is the greatest manifestation of the Love of God! Many saints have spent hours before the cross, in contemplation of the love of Jesus. I hate to bring up the great Second Vatican Council again which was perpetrated by the Freemasons upon us; but, since that time, we have THROWN AWAY THE CROSS…REJECTED IT….STOMPED ON IT…DENIED IT. How many churches took down the crucifix and put up the Resurrected Jesus. Yes, He resurrected but what happened to His demonstration of the most intense love … the Crucifixion? Look where we are now since this rejection of His Love! No talk of sin, mortifications, penance, suffering….life is just filled with a bunch of happy clappy thoughts and experiences. The rejection of the cross has led to the destruction of the world. We are now in WW3 and do not even know it because it is a different kind of warfare. We are so satiated with pleasure pleasure pleasure that many will go down in this war probably caught in some kind of act of sin. People will not even understand it. Many are so lost, so misguided, so deceived by the enemy. We belong to God, therefore, it is just to treat Him like our God and give Him our love. We are to love Him with our WHOLE heart, mind and soul. Some think that is SLAVERY. A holy slavery that leads to peace, joy and love. If one chooses their own will over God’s….it will be a slavery to sin which leads to death, despair and destruction. There is a choice of only two sides. Well…lets get to the dolor. The above paragraph was not in vain. We will now mention some of the horrors that Jesus endured for those sins and so many more. The thoughts of Mary at His feet as He was nailed to the cross is mind-blowing. How can anyone call themselves “Christian” and not understand what that Mother endured…. and then to think She is not deserving of our love? Only God knew and knows what was in the Heart of Mary at the time of the blows and how each blow was a fresh martyrdom. To see the many atrocities especially as they sat upon His chest to pull the left arm out of place to fit where the hole was on the cross. The thoughts of Our Queen and Mother had to be on the past expressions of His love…of the healings He did with those hands, the places where His feet had trodden to be with the sick, deaf, and mute. And when they finally nailed Him, the cross was brought up and dropped into the hole for all to see their Lord and Master. Blessed be the Most Holy Trinity for the miracles of grace wrought in Mary at that time to see such suffering! Most of us do not know what crosses we will meet today; sometimes we cannot guess. But we know that if we meet Jesus we will meet a cross. Some men meet Him and turn away. Some see Him far off, and turn down another road. Some come close up, and leap out of the way as if He were going to harm them. Some pass by and pretend they do not know Him. During these past centuries, He has had very few honest greetings. Some follow Him and in sullenness of servile obedience, they dray their cross. Few kneel down and take the cross off His back and shoulder it with love and walk by His side, singing psalms with Him, saying, stay with us, because it is toward evening and the day is now far spent. We can only carry our crosses one way…heavenward. They keep our faces in that direction. As Father Faber says, “They push us uphill like the needle on the compass always pointing up.” Lesson to learn from the Fifth Dolor – The Crucifixion Jesus and Mary are going one way…the road to Heaven. Yet, the road that they were traveling led to Calvary. No one’s face is toward Heaven when it is not toward Calvary. At the next turn of the road in life…there is usually a sorrow. How are we to look at that sorrow? Will we unite it to the cross of Christ or will we drag it….or worse…reject it. Let us do now what Mary did then…look at Him who is on the road before us, and see how the beauty of the Sacred Heart is the burning furnace of Eternal Love drawing us ever closer to Him until we are finally Home! |
AuthorBernadette Porter is a Traditional Catholic, a wife of 42 years with 6 adult home-schooled children and 6 grandchildren. A sincere devotion to Mary, the Mother of God leads me to want to share "The Church's best kept secret" - Mary! Archives
August 2022
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