You only see your mother once a year?

You mean no weekly visits?

No long distance communications?

And you ignore her requests when you do speak? 

Why do you neglect your own mother like that?

Don't you know that you are hurting her with your shallow way of life and your lack of love?

A weekly visit is not too much to ask, especially as she is not so far from you; and you could speak to her everyday as any decent son or daughter would.

That would please her. You know, do you not, that she loves you more than you can ever imagine?

And that her main wish is that you would return to her family and to her Son's embrace.

So don't be a 'Christmas Catholic' come back now in preparation for Advent that begins on Sunday 1st December.

Return to the Faith and please your mother

 

No posts for a few days

We are at the end of our holiday in Turkey.

We have been received in an exceptional fashion and we are refreshed, re-aligned, re-motivated and ready to take the battle to the B*****s, God bless 'em.

Tomorrow we commence the grind back to Wales but we are heartened by seeing a part of the Turkish coastline that may well have held the gaze of our Blessed Mother - Ave Maria!

I am so very sorry that I have not responded to kind comments and commented on many of your posts......connections are sparse in Lycia.

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible....God bless you and spare you all.

                                                        Our Lady's House in Ephesus 

Our Lady - "If it is right she knows. If it is not right she knows"

Hilaire Belloc's letter to G K Chesterton ................11th December 1907


 

Reform Club, Manchester:
My dear Gilbert,
I am a man afraid of impulse in boats, horses and all action though driven to it. I have never written a letter such as I am writing now, though I have desired to write some six or seven since I became a grown man. In the matter we discussed at Oxford I have a word to say which is easier to say on paper than by word of mouth, or rather, more valuable. All intellectual process is doubtful, all inconclusive, save pure deduction, which is a game if one's first certitudes are hypothetical and immensely valuable if one's first certitude is fixed, yet remains wholly dependent on that.
Now if we differed in all main points I would not write thus, but there are one or two on which we agree. One is "Vere passus, immolatus in cruce pro homine." Another is in a looking up to our Dear Lady, the blessed Mother of God.
I recommend to you this, that you suggest to her a comprehension for yourself, of what indeed is the permanent home of the soul. If it is here you will see it, if it is there you will see it. She never fails us. She has never failed me in any demand.
I have never written thus----as I say----and I beg you to see nothing in it but what I say. There is no connection the reason can seize----but so it is. If you say "I want this" as in your case to know one way or the other----She will give it you: as She will give health or necessary money or success in a pure love. She is our Blessed Mother.

I have not used my judgment in this letter. I am inclined to destroy it, but I shall send it. Don't answer it.

Yours ever
              H. Belloc

My point is: If it is right She knows. If it is not right, She
knows.

Santorum has a woman problem? No, he has a Woman advantage!

Daily Telegraph blogger and Politicalbetting.com Editor, Mike Smithson claims that Santorum is now slightly behind Romney in the latest forecasts, you may read the full post HERE.

And the reason why is explained here in a brief extract:-

"An aspect of the polling detail, however, highlighted a trend that we have seen in many surveys during the past month: Santorum is doing reasonably well with male voters but he is miles behind with women.
Thus in the ARG survey, Santorum led Romney by 43% to 32% with the men in the sample, while Romney led Santorum by 47% to 26% with the women".

Of course, what Mike Smithson does not realise is, that, Santorum has the power of Our Lady behind him. It is her intercession that will make this man the Republican nominee and eventual President, if Almighty God wills it.

And, if Rick Santorum maintains the sartorial advantage!

Santorum and his sleeveless jumper
 aka 'sweater vest'

"This is the image of our Queen......"

Photo: Canterbury Tales

Desecration in Rome as anti Wall Street mobs ransack a Catholic Church, ripping a crucifix from the wall and smashing a statue of Our Lady.

Words are not needed here but prayer is.....and penance in reparation.
As reported in The Guardian, Daily Mail and on Canterbury Tales by Taylor Marshall.

Worth noting that the media described the demonstrators as 'peaceful'

The Fatima prayer of reparation:

O Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I adore Thee profoundly. I offer Thee the most precious Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges, and indifference by which He is offended. By the infinite merits of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg the conversion of poor sinners. Amen.



Did Our Lady die? I don't think so!

Many thanks to this Sunday's sermon from Fr J for some thought provoking material - at least it was thought provoking for me....I have always just assumed the facts about the Assumption.

15th August - Feast of

The Assumption of The Virgin Mary

Did Our Heavenly Mother die before she was assumed? Of course not (although Pope Pius XII was careful to remain ambivalent on the subject).

St Paul said: "The wages of sin is death".......and if you take this statement to its logical conclusion....Our Lady was Mary Immaculate, born without the stain of Original or any other sin on her soul. She was and is unblemished, pure, radiant in her virginity and totally unknown to any offence against God whatsoever.

Therefore, she was, so some of us believe, assumed into Heaven to physically join her Divine Son at a moment of intense spiritual ecstasy...She could not die, she did not die, she was not liable to bodily corruption as she was spiritually incorrupt.

As the Eastern Church would put it...she fell asleep...The Feast of the Dormition of Our Lady. How utterly wonderful!

                                        A prayer for The Assumption:-

The ark which God has sanctified,
Which He has filled with grace,
Within the temple of the Lord
Has found a resting-place.

More glorious than the seraphim,
This ark of love divine,
Corruption could not blemish her
Whom death could not confine.

God-bearing Mother, Virgin chaste,
Who shines in heaven's sight;
She wears a royal crown of stars
Who is the door of Light.

To Father, Son and Spirit blest
may we give endless praise
With Mary, who is Queen of heaven,
Through everlasting days.

Pray for Pope Benedict to celebrate the EF Mass

In this month of the Feast of the Assumption please join the prayer petition by the act of consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary asking for her intercession for the Holy Father to celebrate, in public, the Tridentine Latin Mass.

A good date would be the Feast of the Holy Cross, 14th September and the anniversary of Summorum Pontificum....but really any time soon would be good.

Here is the petition, please pass it to other bloggers and feature it on your blog.......

Act of Consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary

O Mary, Virgin most powerful and Mother of mercy, Queen of Heaven and Refuge of sinners, we consecrate ourselves to thine immaculate heart.

We consecrate to thee our very being and our whole life; all that we have, all that we love, all that we are. To thee we give our bodies, our hearts, and our souls; to thee we give our homes, our families, our country. We desire that all that is in us and around us may belong to thee, and may share in the benefits of thy motherly benediction. And that this act of consecration may be truly efficacious and lasting, we renew this day at thy feet the promises of our Baptism and our first Holy Communion. We pledge ourselves to profess courageously and at all times the truths of our holy Faith, and to live as befits Catholics who are duly submissive to all the directions of the Pope and the Bishops in communions with him. We pledge ourselves to keep the commandments of God and His Church, in particular to keep holy the Lord's Day. We likewise pledge ourselves to make the consoling practices of the Christian religion, and above all, Holy Communion, an integral part of our lives, insofar as we shall be able so to do. Finally, we promise thee, O glorious Mother of God and loving Mother of men, to devote ourselves wholeheartedly to the service of thy blessed cult, in order to hasten and assure, through the sovereignty of thine immaculate heart, the coming of the kingdom of the Sacred Heart of thine adorable Son, in our own hearts and in those of all men, in our country and in all the world, as in heaven, so on earth. Amen.

ARCHBISHOP STACK - DO YOU BELIEVE IN OUR LADY'S INTERCESSIONARY POWERS?

"Not an English and Welsh Bishop again"

                                                     

The new Archbishop Designate of Cardiff, His Grace, George Stack gave an address to the General Synod of the Church of England in which he, apparently, denied the role of Mary, Mother of God with regards to her intercession.

Now the important word is "apparently" because, as William Oddie of The Catholic Herald points out, the Archbishop's phraseology is open to some interpretation - but it damn well shouldn't be! Surely that's why our priests rise up the hierarchical ranks, because of their ability (among many other things) to pronounce clearly and without error on the teachings of Holy Mother Church.

It is not good enough to make a statement that leaves a number of speculative options open as to the meaning behind the words.

I am not one of ++ Stack's biggest fans, I disliked the way he handled the Vaughan School debacle and how he responded to letters with a letter of his own (standard response) plus a computerised signature......very low grade in my books.

However, I would like to think that, on this occasion, the Archbishop has been misunderstood and I would also hope that he will issue a corrective statement in which he clearly lays out the role of Our Lady as part of Church teaching.

BUT..........more than that I would hope (and strongly recommend to his Grace) that he leads a pilgrimage to the National Shrine of Wales, Our Lady of the Taper, in Cardigan.

Our Lady of the Taper - what is the
relevance of Lourdes if we do not
believe in Our Lady's intercession?

 In fact, it would be a very good thing for Welsh Catholics if the new Archbishop were to lead the Latin Mass Society Pilgrimage to the shrine this year - and even celebrate a Latin Mass (EF, that is).

You see......it's not just the people of Cardiff who want to know, it's not even the Catholics of the rest of Wales, it's all Catholics from all over the world who want to be reassured of the Archbishop Designate's belief in Our Holy Mother.

Our Lady is definitely not blonde

That excellent Catholic journalist, Christopher Howse writes in Saturday's Daily Telegraph about Mary the Mother of God and how she has been perceived and portrayed by artists and poets. He quotes the from a poem called "Icon" by contemporary poet and talented artist, Lynn Roberts:

    "She is a dark/scared girl in dusty djellabah and veil,/with dirty feet."




 



Picture: The Daily Telegraph
Our Lady as portrayed by poet Lynn Roberts

I like the realism of this type of portrayal; it shows beauty, honesty and a certain level of basic human goodness. I much prefer this sort of treatment over the conventional blonde haired virgin so beloved of the western world. Those who commission the creation of  statues and those who carry them out seem oblivious to the fact that Mary was a Jewish peasant girl; dark hair, sallow skin and slightly more obvious features than we are used to seeing on our "English Rose" version. I recall the story of how, once Lourdes began to develop as a place of pilgrimage, the church placed a statue of Our Lady in the niche at the Grotto, exactly where she had appeared. This statue caused St Bernadette some angst as, according to her (and she should know), it bore no relation to the vision she had seen. When Our Lady appeared at Lourdes she appeared as a Pyrenean lass, short and stocky but outstandingly beautiful. Let's face it, the niche is only around five feet or less in height, there is no way that the conventional Virgin could have fitted into it. The present statue is, I guess, about four feet in height.

I also like the fact that, wherever you go in the world, Our Lady is featured as a native of the particular country you may be in. In Japan, Our Lady of Akita is most definitely Japanese, the same applies in China and I am sure that Africa is well endowed with genuine Black Madonnas. But here in Europe and, indeed in the USA, Canada and Australia/New Zealand, we are only familiar with Mary's "European" features and I long for an image that I can more easily relate to. What, I wonder, caused Renaissance artists to portray her as a blonde? Was it a form of racism, a reaction against the Jewish race? If so it was very short sighted; I find a Jewish maiden concept utterly charming and we in the Western world should now be mature enough to cope with such things. Perhaps we could see more statues and carvings that are true to the original or, at the very least, our interpretation of how that very young and scared maid from Nazareth must have looked.


Lynn Roberts is a very gifted artist and also has a range of botanical illustrations in her portfolio. I hope that she receives some commissions from the Catholic Church in the future, we need to bring some integrity into the contemporary art within our churches.





      Tall, blonde and lissome? That is not how Our Lady of Lourdes looked!

The Ballad of Walsingham

Bitter, bitter oh to behoulde

The grass to growe

Where the walles of Walsingham

So stately did shewe.

Such were the worth of Walsingham

While she did stand,

Such are the wrackes as now do shewe

Of that (so) holy lande.

Levell, levell with the ground

The Towres do lye

Which with their golden, glitt'ring tops

Pearsed oute to the skye.

Where the weare gates noe gates are nowe,

The waies unknown,

Where the presse of freares did passe

While her fame was far blowen.

Oules do scrike where the sweetest himnes

Lately were songe,

Toads and serpents hold thie dennes

Where the palmers did throng.

Weep, weep, O Walsingham,

Whose days are nightes,

Blessings turned to blasphemies,

Holy deedes to dispites.

Sinne is where Our Lady sate,

Heaven turned is to helle;

Sathan sitte where Our Lord did swaye,

Walsingham, oh, farewell!

HAIL BLESSED VIRGIN MARY!

The angel Gabriel from heaven came,
his wings as drifted snow, his eyes as flame;
"All hail," said he, "thou lowly maiden Mary,
most highly favored lady," Gloria!

"For know a blessed Mother thou shalt be,
all generations laud and honor thee,
thy Son shall be Emmanuel, by seers foretold,
most highly favored lady," Gloria!

Then gentle Mary meekly bowed her head,
"To me be as it pleaseth God," she said,
"my soul shall laud and magnify his holy Name."
Most highly favored lady, Gloria!

Of her, Emmanuel, the Christ, was born
in Bethlehem, all on a Christmas morn,
and Christian folk throughout the world will ever say--
"Most highly favored lady," Gloria!

Pray for Japan, pray for the world, Fatima and Akita - "live the Rosary"

A group of Catholic priests survived the Hiroshima bomb in 1945, living just metres from the epicentre which wiped out all buildings and people within a wide area. How did they survive? This clip tells a little of the story; they "lived Fatima" they "prayed the Rosary"
In 1973, a Japanese nun received Our Lady in a series of visions, the message of Fatima was repeated in Akita.  
  


This extract is from The Catholic Knight blog - link at the end.

Exactly what is the message of Fatima? For the average laymen it amounts to just three things....

1. Repent of your sins.
2. Believe the gospel.
3. Pray the rosary.

It is essentially the same message given at Akita.

Our Lady of Akita

According to this prophecy at Akita, and many others from many places around the world, what Japan has just suffered will be magnified and spread throughout the world in the not-too-distant future. The people of Japan now bear a great burden, to repent of their sins, turn to Jesus Christ, and spread to the world the message of warning His mother gave to them in 1973. They MUST do this.  The message was given to them.  It is their burden to carry.  May God give them the strength to do just that and heal their nation.  May God give us all the strength to continue to pray the rosary and plead for His mercy.

Our Lady of Akita, pray for us.

St. Peter Baptist, martyr and patron of Japan, pray for us.

St. Francis Xavier, patron of Japan, pray for us.

St. Paul Miki, martyr, pray for us.

St. Anthony Dainan, martyr, pray for us.

St. Anthony Ishida, martyr, pray for us.

St. Francis Nagasaki, martyr, pray for us.

St. Francis of St. Bonaventure, martyr, pray for us.

St. Gabriel Jusuke, martyr, pray for us.

St. Gaius Francis, martyr, pray for us.

St. James Kisai, martyr, pray for us.

St. Joachim Sakachibara, martyr, pray for us.

St. John Kokumbuku, martyr, pray for us.

St. John Soan de Goto, martyr, pray for us.

St. Leonard Kimura, martyr, pray for us.

St. Leo Tanaka, martyr, pray for us.

St. Louis Ibachi, martyr, pray for us.

St. Louise of Omura, martyr, pray for us.

St. Matthias of Meako, martyr, pray for us.

St. Michael Kozaki, martyr, pray for us.

St. Paul Aybara, martyr, pray for us.

St. Peter Shukeshiko, martyr, pray for us.

St. Romanus Aybara, martyr, pray for us.

St. Thomas Danki, martyr, pray for us.

St. Thomas Kozaki, martyr, pray for us.

St. Vincent Kaun, martyr, pray for us.

Holy Martyrs of Japan, pray for us.

God our Father,

you guide everything in wisdom and love.

Accept the prayers we offer for the nation of Japan;

by the wisdom of their leaders and integrity of their citizens,

may their suffering be lessened,

may harmony and justice be restored

and may there be lasting prosperity and peace.

We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,

who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,

one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

H/T The Catholic Knight

 Ends/....

It is a sad fact, that, after the Atom bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and then Nagasaki in the August of 1945, the Japanese, naturally, developed a fear, even hatred of all things nuclear. Now we have the Sendai disaster with its nuclear overtones and we again have the voice of Our Lady of Fatima and Our Lady of Akita ringing in our ears: "Pray, Do Penance, Repent"