Month: May 2012

Novena Honoring the Body and Blood of Christ

 

Novena Honoring the Body and Blood of Christ

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The day before his death on the Cross, Christ instituted the Eucharist in the Upper Room. He also offered bread and wine, which “in his sacred hands” (Roman Canon) became his Body and his Blood, offered in sacrifice. Thus he fulfilled the prophecy of the old covenant linked to Melchizedek’s sacrificial offering. For this very reason—the Letter to the Hebrews recalls—”he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek” (5:7-10). 

 

 

May 31st – Offering of our human will to the Celestial Queen

Offering of our human will to the Celestial Queen:

Offering of the human will to the Celestial Queen Most Sweet Mama, here I am, prostrate at the foot of Your Throne. I am Your little daughter, I want to give You all my filial love, and as Your daughter, I want to braid all the little sacrifices, the ejaculatory prayers, my promises to never do my will, which I have made many times during this month of Graces. And forming a crown, I want to place it on Your lap as attestation of love and thanksgiving for my Mama.

But this is not enough; I want You to take it in Your hands as the sign that You accept my gift, and at the touch of Your Maternal fingers, convert it into many suns, for at least as many times as I have tried to do the Divine Will in my little acts.

Ah! Yes, Mother Queen, Your daughter wants to give You homages of Light and of Most Refulgent Suns. I know that You have many of these Suns, but they are not the Suns of Your daughter; so I want to give You mine, to tell You that I Love You, and to bind You to Loving me. Holy Mama, You smile at me and, all Goodness, You accept my gift; and I thank You from the heart. But I want to tell You many things; I want to enclose my pains, my fears, my weaknesses, my whole being in Your Maternal Heart, as the place of my refuge—I want to consecrate my will to You. O please! My Mama, accept it; make of it a Triumph of Grace, and a field on which the Divine Will may extend Its Kingdom. This will of mine, consecrated to You, will render us inseparable, and will keep us in continuous relations. The doors of Heaven will not be closed for me, because, as I have consecrated my will to You, You will give me Yours in exchange. So, either the Mama will come and stay with her daughter on earth, or the daughter will go to Live with her Mama in Heaven. O! How Happy I will be.

Listen, dearest Mama, in order to make the consecration of my will to You more solemn, I call the Sacrosanct Trinity, all the Angels, all the Saints, and before all I protest—and with an oath—to make the Solemn Consecration of my will to my Celestial Mama.

And now, Sovereign Queen, as the fulfillment, I ask for Your Holy Blessing, for myself and for all. May Your Blessing be the Celestial Dew which descends upon sinners to convert them, and upon the afflicted to console them. May it descend upon the whole world and Transform it in Good; may it descend upon the purging souls and extinguish the fire that burns them. May Your Maternal Blessing be Pledge of Salvation for all souls.  Amen

YES! – Fiat!

From Zenit.org

Faith is a “Free Gift of God”

Pope Benedict Reflects on Confidence in God’s ‘Yes’ to Mankind

By Ann Schneible

VATICAN CITY, MAY 30, 2012 –  “God, on the other hand, never tires of us; He never tires of being patient with us, and with His immense mercy He always goes before us; He goes out to meet us first; His “yes” is entirely worthy of our trust.”

Pope Benedict spoke these words during his weekly general audience in Saint Peter’s Square, where he offered a reflection on the letters of Saint Paul, and the role of prayer as a means of personally encountering God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Saint Paul, said the Holy Father,  “Paul suffered great tribulation and had to pass through many difficulties and afflictions, but he never yielded to discouragement, for he was sustained by grace and by the nearness of the Lord Jesus Christ, for whom he had become an apostle by surrendering his entire life to Him.”

It is for this reason, the Pope continues, that Paul begins the second letter to the Corinthians  “with a prayer of blessing and thanksgiving to God — for there was never a moment in his life as an apostle of Christ that he felt the support of the merciful Father, of the God of all consolation, lessen.”

̎In the prayer of blessing that introduces the Second Letter to the Corinthians, what prevails in addition to the theme of affliction is the theme of consolation, which should not be understood as simple comfort, but rather as encouragement and exhortation not to let oneself be conquered by tribulation and difficulties.  The invitation is to live every situation in union with Christ, who takes all of the world’s suffering and sin upon Himself in order to bring light, hope and redemption.”

The Christian life, as well, is often wrought with difficulties, confusion, and suffering. Nonetheless,  “In being faithful to our relationship with the Lord through constant, daily prayer we too are able to feel concretely the consolation that comes from God. And this strengthens our faith, because it makes us experience concretely God’s “yes” to man, to us, to me, in Christ; it makes us feel the fidelity of His love, which extends even to the gift of His Son on the Cross.”

Moreover, Pope Benedict explains that faith is not solely a human action, but is a “gratuitous gift of God rooted in His fidelity, in His ‘yes’, which makes us understand how to live our lives by loving Him and our brothers and sisters. The whole of salvation history is a progressive self-revelation of the God’s faithfulness despite our infidelity and our rejection, in the certainty that “the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable!” as the Apostle declares in the Letter to the Romans (11:29).”

“God, on the other hand, never tires of us; He never tires of being patient with us, and with His immense mercy He always goes before us; He goes out to meet us first; His “yes” is entirely worthy of our trust.”

It is the Holy Spirit, Pope Benedict continued, who “who makes God’s ‘yes’ in Jesus Christ continually present and alive and it is He who creates in our hearts the desire to follow Him, in order to one day enter fully into His love, when in heaven we will receive a dwelling place not fashioned by human hands.”

The Lord’s faithful  ‘yes’ and the Church’s response of ‘amen,’ is echoed throughout the liturgy, expressing our own ‘yes’ to the initiative of God.

“In our prayer, the Holy Father went on to say,  “we are called to say ‘yes’ to God and to respond with the ‘amen’ of adherence, of faithfulness to Him with our whole life.”

Pope Benedect concluded his address, saying that “the ‘amen’ of our personal and communal prayer will envelop and transform the whole of our lives, into a life of consolation, a life immersed in eternal and unshakeable Love.”

THE MISSION NEEDS TO RENEW ITS TRUST IN THE ACTION OF GOD

THE MISSION NEEDS TO RENEW ITS TRUST IN THE ACTION OF GOD

Vatican City, 11 May 2012 (VIS) – “At the current time evangelisation, which is always a pressing task, requires the Church to work even more assiduously throughout the world in order to to ensure that all mankind may come to know Christ”, said Benedict XVI this morning as he received in audience directors of the Pontifical Missionary Works. That organisation, which oversees missionary cooperation among the Churches of the world, is currently celebrating the annual assembly of its governing council.

“Only in Truth, which is Christ Himself”, the Holy Father said, “can humankind discover the meaning of life, find salvation, and develop in justice and peace. All men and all peoples have the right to receive the Gospel of truth. … Jesus, the Word incarnate, is always the centre of our announcement, the point of reference for our evangelising mission and for its methodology, because He is the human face of God, Who wishes to meet all men and women so as to bring them into communion with Him, in His love”.

“The mission today needs to renew its trust in the action of God; it needs to pray more intensely that His Kingdom may come. … We must invoke light and strength from the Holy Spirit, and commit ourselves with decision and generosity so as to inaugurate, in a certain sense, ‘a new era of proclamation of the Gospel … because, after two millennia, a major part of the human family still does not acknowledge Christ, but also because the situation in which the Church and the world find themselves at the threshold of the new millennium is particularly challenging'”, said the Holy Father quoting Blessed John Paul II’s Apostolic Exhortation “Ecclesia in Asia”. Pope Benedict also expressed his support for the project with which the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples and the Pontifical Missionary Works are supporting the Year of Faith, a project involving “an international campaign which, by praying the Rosary, accompanies the work of evangelisation in the world and helps many of the baptised to rediscover and deepen their faith”.

“Announcing the Gospel often involves considerable difficulty and suffering. The growth of the Kingdom of God in the world, in fact, frequently comes about at the cost of His servants’ blood. In this period of economic, cultural and political change in which human beings often feel alone, prey to anguish and desperation, the messengers of the Gospel, even if they announce hope and peace, continue to be persecuted as their Master and Lord was. But, despite the problems and the tragic reality of persecution, the Church is not discouraged, she remains faithful to the mandate of her Lord, aware that ‘throughout Christian history, martyrs, that is, witnesses, have always been numerous and indispensable to the spread of the Gospel'”.

The Pope concluded his address by recalling that the Pontifical Missionary Works had been given the particular task of “supporting the ministers of the Gospel, and helping them preserve the ‘joy of evangelising, even when it is in tears that we must sow’. … Your work of missionary animation and formation lies at the very heart of pastoral care”, he told his audience, “because the ‘missio ad gentes’ is the paradigm for all apostolic activity of the Church. Become an increasingly visible and concrete expression of the sharing of personnel and means among Churches which, as communicating vessels, experience the same missionary vocation and impulse, and which work in every corner of the earth to sow the Word of Truth in all peoples and all cultures”.

Our Lady of Fatima May 13

08 May 2012 04:20 PM PDT

Because By Making Reparation, We Share In Christ’s Redemptive Suffering!

What Is Reparation?

    In the summer of 1916, in the second apparition of the Angel to the children, he asked them to offer every
suffering as an act of reparation to God. On three occasions, in May, July, and October of 1917, our Lady instructed the children to make reparation for the sins against God and the sins against our Lady’s Immaculate Heart. However, nothing made as much impact on the children as the July vision of hell which caused all three, but especially Francisco, to take on many penances and offer them as acts of reparation.

    Reparation is the repairing or making up for the offenses against God. This covers a wide variety of areas from the fact of Original Sin to our own personal sins and even to the sins of others no matter how large or small the offense might be. God is the author of justice, but He is also the norm of justice. This means that He can determine what, if any, atonement needs to be made for sin. In other words, He can simply write off our sins without requiring any reparation, but normally He will not do this because reparation is actually something that is good for us.

God’s Justice Is Not Just A Concept

    We can see just how grievous our sins are to God by the fact that He did not just write them off, but sent His own Son to suffer and die, i.e., to make reparation for our sins. In this we see how important justice is to God. Justice is not just a concept, it is a truth that must be upheld and He did not back away from what justice requires even though, if we think in terms of human relationships, sending His Son to die would be much more difficult than just writing off the sins. Through His suffering and death, Jesus made atonement and reparation for our sins, but in His mercy He saved a little bit for us to do. This is not only so that we could make up, to some degree, for our own sins, but that we can actually have a share in the work of redemption and salvation. St. Paul tells us in his Letter to the Colossians that he makes up in his body for what is lacking in the suffering of Christ for the sake of His body, the Church. It is not that Jesus did not do enough, but that the members of His Mystical Body would also share in this work.

How Can We Make Reparation For Our And The Worlds Sins?

    By uniting our prayers, works and sufferings to those of Jesus, we can actually make some reparation for our offenses against the justice of God. Because we are members of Christ, our offerings become part of the work of our Lord which was to make reparation for the sins of the whole world. Therefore, our offering not only makes reparation for our sins, but for the sins of others as well. I said earlier that God did not just wipe out our sins because the need to make reparation is better for us than to just have our sins forgiven. Making reparation helps us to understand the gravity of sin, but it also helps us to avoid sin so that we do not offend God any more. If our sins were just overlooked, we would think we could do anything and have no consequences. More than this, God allows us to love Him by making reparation. When we love someone we do not want to offend that person and, if we do commit an offense, we want to make it up to that person rather than just sweeping it under the rug. Love of God will drive us to want to make reparation.

    As a child of God and as a member of Christ, strive to satisfy the justice of God by making reparation for your sins and those of others.