Be the light in this World

A message to Emily from Jesus for all of us who attempt to present Christ to the world.

"In a dark room, a flame will always shine brightest. In a fully lit room, there will be no shadows. Be the light in this world."
I have read and reread this message, as Jesus seems to be telling us something more. I believe the more is about the purity of Christ. The shadows would be the imperfection of the message. We may all find it difficult to live the pure truth of Christ every minute of every day but we must be, WILLING, to try so as to be able to be HIS light to others.

1 John: 5&6
This is the message we have heard from Him and declared to you: God is light, in Him there is no darkness at all.

Deuteronomy 30:14
No the Word is very near you, in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey It.

When we are purely willing to live His Truth we will find that the Truth is already in us. When you advise people as to the direction they should take towards God you know that they will realize you are speaking Truth.
We follow the Truth of Christ through the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.

The Sisterhood of Women

Very early one morning 7 or 8 years ago I was awakened by the Holy Mother of God.  She asked me to go to a particular side of my house and take a picture. It was barely light but I took the shot anyway.  I went back to the guest room on that side of the house and as I got into bed she said, "Abortion has destroyed the sisterhood of women."

Abortion and birth control  changed everything for women as it relates to the exclusive and sacred right of women to give birth. Previous to this the womb was sacred. Conception was the beginning of an eternal journey for a woman and her child. The bond of love was considered natural.  It went without saying that the child and mother would need some tender loving care from more experienced members of the family and close friends.  Even in the worst of circumstances child bearing brought with it a sense of joy for the Mother but also a rejoicing in her community.  Not so after Roe V Wade. Suddenly and over night it became the last an least important roll of a woman. Yes we have continued to give birth and love our children. Unfortunately the idea of helping each other was greatly diminished as we were now able to choose life or death for our own child. If a woman had a miscarriage or lost a child you are supposed to be able to deal with it, after all there are more important things in life to value and enjoy. 

This will never be true, the umbilical cord is eternal.  Mother and child share an unbreakable bond of love forever. So how do we care for each other when the life of a child is returned to Jesus before the Mother returns to him? It is not the same way Grandma and her sisters took care of each other. If you allow your self to think back on stories of past generations you should be able to understand the meaning and importance of  "The Sisterhood of Women." 

The picture I took that morning is the background for this blog. When you love Jesus with a pure heart He brings you back to the true meaning of life. The best and most beautiful way to spend your time on earth preparing for the eternal wedding feast. 

The following is another message to Emily from Jesus.  It is about the subject of motherhood.  It was given this past Sunday November 15, 2015 just after Holy Mass.  

"Emily,

You must know that dying is a gift, a merciful gift intended as a passage into the kingdom of heaven. So many blame Me or blame themselves for the passing of their loved ones, but what they do not realize is that each life begins and ends when I Will it. There are some who are taken differently than the life that I had planned for them, but that doesn't mean that I abandon them. When it comes to children who die during the first moments of life inside of their mother, I am in control. You must know that if I take a child too soon for your standards, it is in fact a gift. The suffering that a parent might feel to lose a child is far less than the suffering that the child will face in the future. The bigger picture drives My Will. A parents biggest goal in life is to lead their children to Me, to heaven. Know that if I take a child, you have done your job. Your pain is only temporary, and the reunion in heaven will be the most beautiful thing you have ever witnessed. Just as I will reunite with my child in great joy, you will reunite with your child with great joy. I have not abandoned you, and I never will. I have My Hands on all of my children and will always take care of them.

Jesus"

Thank you Jesus for loving us so much!

 

Joy of Penance - Janet Klasson ~ November 15, 2015

“My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want, but what you want.” (Matthew 26:39)

I have read that the cross is the inheritance of Christians, the great treasure he has left us in his Last Will. Yet, being human as he was, when faced with our own Gethsemane, we most often echo his words that this cup of suffering might pass us by. Sometimes, the Lord answers our prayer and removes our trial. But there are times, as with Jesus, when the Father asks us to enter into his will, to trust him on this, that there are bigger things at play than we know about. It is at these times that we are asked to embrace suffering as a gift, as a measure and promise of our “sonship”.
St. Catherine of Genoa, in her “Treatise on Purgatory” has given us much food for thought on the issue of suffering. While what she is referring to in her Treatise is the suffering we endure after death in order to be purified of “the rust and stain of sins”, I believe it may be applied as well to the sufferings we are asked to endure here on earth. In Chapter XVI she has this to say about the souls in Purgatory:

“For if his goodness did not temper justice with mercy (satisfying it with the precious blood of Jesus Christ), one sin alone would deserve a thousand hells. They suffer their pains so willingly that they would not lighten them in the least, knowing how justly they have been deserved. They resist the will of God no more than if they had already entered upon eternal life. […] They see all things, not in themselves nor by themselves, but as they are in God, on whom they are more intent than on their sufferings. For the least vision they can have of God overbalances all woes and all joys that can be conceived.”

So often I have resisted suffering, prayed ceaselessly to have this cup pass me by, without in the least desiring that God’s will be done. I did not fully realize that what God was offering me was a gift, the mitigation of a portion of my suffering after death, or the accomplishment of a great good for another.
Instead of being intent on my sufferings, I need to see all things as they are in God, who only desires our ultimate good, which culminates in total union with him. He wants none of the delays that sinfulness throws up as roadblocks to perfect union. In accepting the suffering that he wills for is, we are saying, “Lord, neither do I want to delay our eternal union. Do with me as you will.
A lifetime of penance seems a small thing to offer in light of St. Catherine’s statement that one sin alone would deserve a thousand hells. It is God’s mercy alone that makes our small efforts bear fruit so far out of proportion to the effort involved.
In the book Spirit of Penance, Path to God, author Van Zeller makes this statement

“Few things are so uselessly squandered as the riches of pain. Leave the Passion (of Christ) out of account, and suffering is not a good but an evil; take the Passion as the foundation and principle of Christian penance, and suffering is of infinite worth.”

It is always good to ponder the sufferings of Christ and our own call to penance, to come back often to these familiar words of Christ in the Garden and ponder them deeply: “Not what I want, but what you want.”
May the Lord grant us all the grace to remain in his Holy Will now and forever.

Our Lady of America Newsletter, November 15, 2015

Feast of Saint Albert the Great - Ten Years Ago Today!
 Please know of my deep appreciation and gratitude for your prayers and support. Especially for those who have participated in our Novena requests and have gone before the Blessed Sacrament seeking the Mercy of Our Lord and the graces promised through this devotion to Our Blessed Mother. Your prayers have certainly sustained this movement and our hope in the promises of Our Lady of America, The Immaculate Virgin.

Please remember our U.S. Bishops this week as they gather in Baltimore Maryland for their annual conference. I expect this devotion will be a topic of discussion for many of the bishops, although probably not on the official agenda. Please pray that Our Lady reveals to the hearts of our bishops the gift that is this devotion. Ten years ago today Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke (then Archbishop of St. Louis, MO) blessed this statue of Our Lady of America that was first publicly displayed just two days earlier at the 2006 U.S.C.C.B conference in Baltimore. (See story)

Pray for the bishops as they meet this week! May the Holy Spirit Guide them and Our Lady of America intercede for them.

By Thy Holy & Immaculate Conception, Oh Mary, deliver us from evil!

Please spread the word by forwarding this email to family and friends and encourage them to sign-up for their own copy of this free newsletter by clicking here.

B.V.M. Our Lady of America
C/O Langsenkamp Family Apostolate
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Indianapolis, IN 46268-1180

B.V.M. Our Lady of America is a not-for-profit activity of the BVM Foundation, Inc. Batesville, IN 47006
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www.OurLadyofAmerica.org

St. Mary Magdalene

Obviously setting up this blog and writing about the patron Saints has taken a long time. I have pondered many times on how to present St. Mary Magdalene. I can't seem to get past my own sinfulness in order to present St. Mary properly. Then came the moment on my way to confession for the countless number of times, "I do not require perfection, just that you love." Words from Jesus. At that moment I understood myself once again as a sinner in need of forgiveness and at the same time knowing I could not live apart from Him even in my sinfulness.

That is what Women Espousing Purity is all about, not that we are pure but that he is pure. He is asking for our love, how ever it is possible for each one to show that love.

St. Mary had the reputation of a bad girl, the black sheep of the family. She died at the age of 72 in the loving care of angels. Her love for Jesus went beyond the fear of the opinion of others. Beyond the threat of death at the foot of the cross. She was the first to meet Him after the resurrection. For me that is huge, not his Mother, not John or Peter but Mary of Magdalene. Ponder that.

The words of St. Therese the Little Flower strengthen my heart as well.

I suggest, that as a repentant sinner, you look over the many pictures on line of St. Mary Magdalene and choose a few favorites,  pictures that revive your senses of love, hope and forgiveness.

1 John 4:16 ~ "...... God is Love. Whoever lives in Love lives in God, and God in him."

---

 The sense of unworthiness  can be overwhelming but we must get beyond that in all humility.  I am finding humility very difficult. I'm a spoiled sinner and I like being spoiled.

A Sign of Hope

If our society is going to come out of the sexual suicide dive we are currently in,
we need a social climate change we can believe in. The place to start is on the campuses.

College, once an oasis for intellectual development, has become an incubator of sexual hook-ups. What can we do to shelter our youth (and they are youth) from an increasingly crass climate, the slimy wetlands they are exposed to? Barring a massive shutdown of cable television and lewd advertising, are there practical acts that can have consequences for the college experience our students will have?
At their peak of sexual development, away from home, and surrounded by plenty of the-other-gender, college students could not be more vulnerable. Since campuses now host 60 percent girls to 40 percent boys, the boys are the ones who benefit in the hooking up derby. They are coming to college to learn new things, but why conflate so much learning in a short period.

Peter Wood and Michael Toscano examined the social life of Bowdoin College students. Their findings show that about 75 percent of the students were hooking up. The exact definition was left to the discretion of students who answered the question, but there is little doubt about their understanding of the sexual nature of their dating.

No long ago we interviewed a group of seniors from a nearby Catholic college. One rather jaded student remarked, "They (the dorm counselors) are more concerned if I smoke in my room and how much beer I bring into my room than how many women I've brought in." He noted with a smile that he benefited from the relaxed sexual climate.

Free thinkers who read Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" may think virginity is just a "social construct," as a Dartmouth student recently said in an interview in the college newspaper. She arrived at this conclusion after announcing she had "lost her virginity." Students are sometimes taught that marriage is just another social construct. That is, that an idea or a notion has no true and stable reality, but rather is an invention, something that a social group has made up. (Welcome to today's higher education!)
The current social climate around sexuality is not the result of simple experimentation; no, it took a combination of feminist advocacy, the gay rights revolution, modern technology, and liberated college campuses to create fertile soil for a sexual license.

If our society is going to come out of the sexual suicide dive we are currently in, we need a social climate change we can believe in. The place to start is on the campuses. Policies make a difference.

First, colleges and universities should eliminate mixed-sex dorms. That seems like a no brainer. American campuses have gone from "in loco parentis" with strict, but sensible hours when students had to be in their residences to now, when there are few or no regulated hours. This seems a casual policy which serves students little. Colleges can reinstitute dorm and housing closing hours, which would likely give the reluctant sexual adventurer an excuse to end a date.

Single-sex dorms are in the interest of many who would be reluctant to address the topic. John Garvey president of Catholic University took a bold stand to start eliminating co-ed dorms. This year the campus restricted freshman dorms to single-sex living. What is keeping other campuses from following suit and ending mixed-sex dorms?

Still on the dorm scene, one practice has inconvenienced many students. The boyfriend, or girlfriend moves in with his or her partner. This is, of course, of grave annoyance to roommates whose privacy is compromised and who did not choose this extra person to be living in their room. In these cases the aggrieved party should be encouraged to confront the issue and, if not corrected, report this arrangement to campus authorities.

Second, counselors on college campuses would likely find their work lightened and hearts broken less frequently with less sexually permissive policies. Possibly the number of rapes and assaults would reduce with policy reforms. Colleges can support their policy changes by publishing statistics after they are implemented. Colleges in the past have been reluctant to give a true picture of real assault cases fearing bad publicity.

Student services on campuses are all-too-often complicit in promoting casual sexuality. Most campuses freely provide birth control pills and devices. Ending this policy would help the sexual climate improve.

Since colleges set the standards for high schools, both academically and socially, there will be a filter down effect on high school behaviors with these new college standards. After all, most parents are as concerned about the moral and social climate at school as they are about academic standards. But colleges have to hear about our concerns. Letters and forums are necessary to make parents' fears known.

Third, colleges are supposed to be teaching institutions, where wisdom is available. American's young are in dire need of sexual wisdom. On-campus forums on sex, drugs, alcohol and dating are time well spent. New students need to be informed about the toxic combination of sex and drugs. Parents like to think they have prepared their teens for college, especially about alcohol and sex, but the learning curve is quite steep.

Taking bold initiative always takes courage and group support, especially in matters of human sexuality. Parents need their religious counselors to step up to the plate. We can ask our priests and ministers to speak more forcefully on chastity and the consequences of pre-marital sexual activity. They have heard the stories and witnessed the pain. They are only too aware of the lives ruined by promiscuous sexuality. It's time parents to find their voice. It's time to lean on colleges and churches to lend a hand in this campaign.

Our youth are worthy of a sexual climate change.

Kevin and Marilyn Ryan, editors of "Why I'm Still a Catholic," worship at St. Lawrence Church in Brookline, Mass.