Private Vows in The Laity/Spirituality

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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

 

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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.”

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"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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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

 

 

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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.

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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

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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

 

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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.

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"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

 

 

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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

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"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.