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Delivered Monday through Friday!
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September 25,
2008
Sheep May Safely Graze
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Joy from the Monastery |
Thoughts from Sister Patricia
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to leave a comment and share with others about this topic.
Quote for the Day:
When the soul seeks God, and seeks him alone, when it tends
towards him with all it energies, when it clings to no created
thing, God fills it with joy.
Blessed Columbia Marmion
Quote from the book, "101 Inspirational Stories of the Power of Prayer"
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 Sister Jane's birthday
In the right of the picture.. that little green blob inside the cage is Pi - he was pruning his feathers so not really ready for a picture. He is going through his fall molt. Lots of pretty green feathers and some with blue and red on them... I save them. I don't know what I will do with them....but they seem sort of special.
My Monastic Moment for the day is still simmering. The entry for today was Prioritize Prayer. As a sort of round about way to get to the core of that thought - I started by making a list of all the things that make prayer less desirable. Something that we put on the back burner instead of the front. I've probably gone through all of these at some point or other. I was thinking today about being a "nun" and being holy. Sometimes we kind of think (yes, even me) that living in a monastery just naturally makes one a bit on the holy side. And sometimes folks seem surprised when they find, "Gosh, they are not any holier than me" and they get a little disappointed.
This is how I figured it out. At least for today. Being in a monastery does not make you a different person than you are. We come with our weaknesses and blind spots and failings. The environment of the monastery and the support of other sisters, the structured prayer life, all help to make living a holy life easier.. but we still have to work out our bumps and sore spots as everyone else does. So this getting holy is still a day by day process - BUT it is certainly a lot easier to work towards holiness in a structure in which the day, the thought, and the goal is all centered on holiness.
And I could be wrong about this.. but it seems in my case.. that God said, "This lady will never make it on the streets. She will get in one mess after another - I'm just going to have to make things as easy for her as I possibly can. I will give her a vocation to be a nun. That's the best safety measure I can do."
Blessings of Peace and All Good!
Sister Patricia
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http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/monasticmoments/archives/149597.asp
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Book on Reconciliation
Saint of the day
Reverend Fun
Motivational
Meditation
from Greatday.com
My Everything
Christian and the Lion
Benjamin Zander
James Martin, SJ [2:36]
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The Candy Factory
Helena Cody
Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, Canada
Growing up in a family of eight children with only one income, I was
accustomed to living a simple life. We had no car and my father had to
use someone else's boat to get to work. We children wore hand-me-down
clothes--especially me, being the seventh child. But we never considered
ourselves poor, and we never went hungry, having fresh food from our
garden, and deer meat during hunting season.
Nonetheless, I dreamt of where, when I grew up, I most wanted to
work so that I could enjoy a life of luxury such as my family could never
afford. I remember often praying on Sundays and during daily Mass for
a particular place where I wanted to work when I was old enough.
More
http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/monasticmoments/archives/149590.asp
From the book 101 Inspirational Stories of the Power of Prayer
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Blogs Supporting 101 Prayer |
The Daily Grotto
Danielle Bean
Friends for Jesus
Cause of Our Joy
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Rejoice in Me
by Msgr. David E. Rosage
Salvation Our Final Refuge
Psalm 37:39-40
The salvation of the just is from the Lord:
he is their refuge in time of distress.
And the Lord helps them and delivers them;
he delivers them from the wicked and saves them,
because they take refuge in him.
We may be perplexed at times at what appears to be a terrible injustice—the wicked seem to prosper while the good seem to suffer unjustly. Yet our faith tells us that God is just, rewarding the good and punishing the wicked.
If we are trying to live a good life, we may have to wait for some time, or even to the end of life, for our reward, but even this is a short time compared to the life awaiting us.
Then we will hear those welcome words of our Savior: "Come. You have my Father's blessing! Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world." (Mt 25:34)
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A Smile from Home - Danielle Bean
Today's Thought
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pictures and links to go with this text.
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Greetings from London with Sister Janet Fearns, FMDM
Pause for Prayer
Visit Janet's Blog to see pictures to go with this text.
On a personal note…
Dowry of Our Lady
‘Our Lady’s dowry’. This used to be the description that England applied to itself and that other countries also used of the country that had dedicated itself to Our Blessed Mother. That is why the Feast of Our Lady of Walsingham, celebrated in England on 24th September, is so important: it recalls a time when, throughout the land, there were shrines dedicated to Our Lady. Every county had its own place of pilgrimage in her honour. Even today, the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham is also known as ‘England’s Nazareth’.
The feast of Our Lady of Walsingham dates back to 1061, before the Norman Conquest, when Mary appeared in a vision to Richeldis de Faverches, a devout Saxon noblewoman, in 1061 in the Norfolk village of Walsingham. Richeldis was asked to build a wooden replica of the house in Nazareth in which the Annunciation took place. Today, after more than 1000 years, archaeologists have discovered the approximate location of that little shrine which became, not only a place of national pilgrimage, especially during the times of the Crusades when travelling to Rome, the Holy Land and Compostella were highly dangerous, but also the world’s third most important Catholic shrine. Records still exist of the visits of seven English kings, including (perhaps surprisingly) Henry VIII, who also ordered its destruction in 1538.
The original statue of Our Lady of Walsingham was burnt in a bonfire in London, but enough miniatures remained for us to know that Mary was seated on a throne, wearing a simple Saxon crown, carrying a lily in her right hand and bearing Jesus, also wearing a crown, on her knee. This was sufficient to reconstruct the familiar image seen today, commissioned in honour of the declaration of the Dogma of the Assumption in 1950, ‘solemnly crowned near the site of the original Shrine on behalf of Pope Pius XII by his Apostolic Delegate’ and installed in the Slipper Chapel in 1954.
‘Our Lady, as she is venerated at Walsingham, is depicted as a simple woman, a mother. She is seated on the throne of Wisdom, in the midst of the Church which is represented by the two pillars symbolic of the Gate of Heaven, with seven rings to signify the seven sacraments and the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. The arched back of the throne reminds us of the rainbow which was set as a sign of God’s fidelity to his creation. Our Lady is clothed in the blue of divinity, the white of motherhood and the red of virginity. In her hand she holds a lily-sceptre with three blooms because she was virginal before, during and after the Saviour’s birth. As the Woman of the New Creation, the New Eve, she crushes beneath her feet a toadstone, symbolic of the power of evil. As the Queen of Heaven and of England, her Dowry, she is crowned with a Saxon crown. On his mother’s knee is the child Jesus who, as the Word of God made Flesh, holds the book of the Gospels. He extends his right arm in a double gesture of blessing and protection of his mother.’
Exquisitely, the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham is, yet again, a symbol of unity, where Anglicans, as well as Catholics venerate our mother, all of us praying for the day when Mary will, once again, be our Queen, bringing us together in her Son. The tradition has never died out that it is through praying to Our Lady of Walsingham, that unity will be restored. As the hymn says: ‘Be England thy dowry as in days of yore.’
God bless,
Sr Janet
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Spiritual Blessings from Father Rory Pitstick
A Virtual Retreat
Reflections following the Daily Liturgical cycle
Visit Fr. Rory's Blog
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Eccl 1: 2-11
Ps 89(90): 3-4. 5-6.
12-13. 14 and 17bc
Lk 9: 7-9
Daily Readings
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Sep 25 Thu: Ordinary Weekday
From today's readings:
“Vanity of vanities! All things are vanity!... Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain wisdom of heart..... Herod the tetrarch heard about all that was happening, and he was greatly perplexed....”
The Churchman
A small sampling of the book of Ecclesiastes will be presented over the next few days. “Ecclesiastes” is the Greek translation of the Hebrew “Qoheleth,” which means “churchman,” or “man of the assembly.” The book’s stark realism appeals strongly to people who appreciate that, but one must avoid a superficial reading which could lead to the conclusion that the author is cynical. Although Qoheleth’s “vanity of vanities” refrain is often plagiarized by cynics, the Churchman is not that at all, unless one is limited by a strictly materialist worldview.
As with much of wisdom literature, the words of Ecclesiastes challenge the reader to look at the big picture of life, rather than the narrower day-to-day issues which occupy most of our thoughts, because so much of those insipid issues are nothing but “vanity of vanities.”
What do you spend your time doing? Where are you going in life? What in this world have you found with lasting value? These, and other philosophical “meaning of life” questions are too frightening for so many people to take the time to answer - they’d rather shake them off with the convenient excuse Scarlet O’Hara relied on in Gone With the Wind: “I can’t think about that right now - I’ll think about that tomorrow!” Ecclesiastes insists that we can and must confront the “big questions,” but the mind must first be cleared of superficialities and vanities in order to make room for sublimities.
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