In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
O my Jesus, You have said: “Truly I say to you, ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you.”
Behold I knock, I seek and ask for the grace of…
(Mention your Intention Here)
Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in you.
O my Jesus, You have said: “Truly I say to you, if you ask anything of the Father in my name, he will give it to you.” Behold, in Your name, I ask the Father for the grace of…
(Mention your Intention Here)
Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in you.
O my Jesus, You have said: “Truly I say to you, heaven and earth will pass away but My words will not pass away.” Encouraged by Your infallible words I now ask for the grace of…
(Mention your Intention Here)
Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in you.
O Sacred Heart of Jesus, for whom it is impossible not to have compassion on the afflicted, have pity on us miserable sinners and grant us the grace which we ask of You, through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, Your tender Mother and ours.
Amen.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today is a great day for my family
We’re celebrating our parents’ 70th wedding anniversary
Joe and Pauline Donnelly
Thank you, mum and dad, for the life, love, and faith you have shared with us.
Why does Mary look younger than Jesus in Michelangelo's Pietà?
The answer is one of the most beautiful in art history...
Mary is holding the body of her 33 year old son, but she looks 20. Critics noticed it the moment the sculpture was unveiled in 1499. The mother of a man who has just been crucified would have been in her late forties or early fifties. Michelangelo had carved her as a girl.
His own biographer, Ascanio Condivi, was the one who finally asked him why. The answer Michelangelo gave is preserved in Condivi's Life of Michelangelo and has been repeated for centuries: "Do you not know that chaste women stay fresh much more than those who are not chaste? How much more in the case of the Virgin, who had never experienced the least lascivious desire that might change her body?"
Most modern critics treat this answer as a half-serious deflection. Michelangelo was famous for his sharp tongue and refused to explain himself to people he considered beneath his intellect.
The deeper answer is older, and it lies inside one of the greatest poems ever written. In the final canto of Dante's Paradiso, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux begins his prayer to the Virgin with one of the most extraordinary lines in Italian literature:
"Vergine madre, figlia del tuo figlio."
"Virgin mother, daughter of your own son."
Michelangelo, who knew Dante by heart, was carving that line into stone. Mary is younger than Jesus because Jesus is older than the universe... because she gave birth to her own creator.
But there is another reading, simpler than either of those, and it is the one I find myself thinking of today. Every mother who has held her child has held them at every age at once. The infant is still inside the toddler. The toddler is still inside the teenager. The young man on her lap, even dead, is also the boy she nursed and the baby she first carried home.
And maybe that's why Michelangelo did not carve Mary as the years had aged her. He carved her as love had kept her: outside of time, outside of grief, holding her son the way she had always held him...
Happy Mother's Day.
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I love Fernando. One suggestion: up that Rosary to once a day brother. Especially as you enter the NFL, you’ll need it, and it will only strengthen your virtue, and enhance your witness!
Thankful for this young man and his Catholic witness.
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Ave María, grátia pléna, Dóminus técum. Benedícta tu in muliéribus, et benedíctus frúctus véntris tui, Iésus. Sáncta María, Máter Dei, ora pro nobis peccatóribus nunc et in hora mortis nostræ. Amen
I could have written this…similar things have happened after fervent and consistent prayers for my family and others. Sometimes it takes years, but it’s so glorious when those prayers are answered! 🙏💙
A much older cousin of mine lives down the street. She left the church sometime after her divorce, although she never remarried. She raised her sons Catholic(one is my age), both have since left and no longer attend Mass, except maybe holidays.
Often when I walk, I pass by their house and would think about stopping by to invite them back to church. I was too afraid to seem pushy and drive them away. So I just started praying for them. I’ve been praying for them, (and many lapsed family) to return for years now.
Today before mass there was a larger line than normal for confession. I was sitting there reading waiting my turn, and I looked up, and she was there. She had come to confession. We hugged. She started crying, I told her she couldn’t know how happy I was to see her. My eyes started watering. She had her notes on a scratch paper. She went in to confession after I got out. She stayed and prayed the rosary before mass. She stayed for Mass and received the Eucharist.
Words can’t express how it feels to pray for family and see them return. God is good.
Don’t give up.
Keep praying.
It may be years, but just know, your prayers are heard.
Is lying worse than murder?
In the Inferno, Dante the Poet places the sin of flattery in a worse section of hell than murder. How could this be?
Dante is a master of the soul, and what he offers you is a tremendous insight into the spiritual harm of lying and its corruptive effect upon the intellect of man.
He presents a brilliant catechesis on the soul, truth, and the reality of Jesus Christ.
You will never see lying the same way again.
https://t.co/QBOydkoOw8
He brought the public sacrifice of the mass to an end during COVID.
He portrayed the building of a mammon city in Gaza with a golden statue of himself at the center.
He’s been portrayed on commemorative coins as a new Cyrus next to a temple in Jerusalem.
He’s portrayed himself as the Pope.
Now he portrays himself as Christ miraculously healing some mystery man (which looks creepily like Epstein).
Among a thousand other exhibits of a disturbingly biblical, even eschatological character.
He doesn’t have to be THE Antichrist for all this to be extremely, blatantly, in your face antichristic.
I grieve for the President’s soul.
And out of love for the President’s eternal soul, which is in grave jeopardy, let us pray and do reparation for his sins—particularly his blasphemies against Almighty God—with the hope that he repents and converts.