Devout Catholic

Devout Catholic

2/14/2025, 4:07:11 AM

Within a couple of years, Prince Rastislav of Moravia asked Emperor Michael III to send missionaries to Great Moravia, today’s Czech Republic. His people had rejected paganism and embraced Christianity, but they didn’t have anyone who could explain the faith to them in their native Slavic language. In Great Moravia, Constantine and Methodius began to translate the Bible and liturgical books into the Slavic language. Since there was no written form of the language or even an alphabet, Constantine created one. He translated the various sounds into symbols, enabling the two brothers to write down the sacred texts. They taught the people and future Slavic clerics how to read their new written language. The new alphabet developed into today’s Cyrillic alphabet, the basis of many Eastern European and Asian languages used by more than 250 million people today. In the face of German criticism of teaching the Slavs in their native language, Constantine and Methodius traveled to Rome. Pope Adrian II ordained them bishops and sent them back to Great Moravia. Before leaving Rome, however, Constantine fell sick. Before dying, he fully consecrated himself to God as a monk in one of the Greek monasteries, taking the monastic name Cyril. His brother Methodius then returned to Great Moravia to continue his work. Bishop Methodius spent the next fourteen years evangelizing the people in their native language, forming clergy, and effectively administering the Church. He continued to endure harsh treatment from the Germanic clergy, even being imprisoned by them for a time, but he pressed on, extending his missionary work beyond the borders of Great Moravia. A millennia later, the brothers received the universal honor they deserved when the Western Church added them to its liturgical calendar. A century after that, Pope John Paul II, a Slav himself, honored Cyril and Methodius with the title of co-patrons of Europe and Apostles to the Slavs.

Devout Catholic

2/14/2025, 4:06:25 AM

*_February 14th ~ Sts Cyril, monk and Methodius, Bishop; Memorial_* Cyril and Methodius’ story began in Thessalonica, Greece, a territory evangelized by Saint Paul. Then named Constantine and Michael, the two were among seven sons born to a Greek-speaking imperial magistrate and his wife. Along with Greek and Latin, the two learned their mother’s unwritten Slavic language. After completing his education in Constantinople, Constantine became a priest and teacher. At that time, Constantine’s brother Michael abandoned his civil service career and became a monk, taking the name Methodius. While in his thirties, Constantine gave up his teaching career to embrace a life of prayer in his brother’s monastery. A few years later, the two brothers responded to Byzantine Emperor Michael III’s request to evangelize the Jews and Turks of Khazars, modern-day Russia, Ukraine, and Crimea. The two brothers learned Hebrew and Turkish to speak to the people in their native tongues.

Devout Catholic

2/18/2025, 3:40:30 AM

*_February 18th ~ St Bernadette Soubirous; Memorial_* Bernadette Soubirous was born in 1844, the first child of an extremely poor miller in the town of Lourdes in southern France. The family was living in the basement of a dilapidated building when on February 11,1858, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to Bernadette in a cave above the banks of the Gave River near Lourdes. Bernadette, 14 years old, was known as a virtuous girl though a dull student who had not even made her first Holy Communion. In poor health, she had suffered from asthma from an early age. There were 18 appearances in all, the final one occurring on the feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, July 16. Although Bernadette’s initial reports provoked skepticism, her daily visions of “the Lady” brought great crowds of the curious. The Lady, Bernadette explained, had instructed her to have a chapel built on the spot of the visions.

Devout Catholic

2/15/2025, 7:17:40 AM

*LITANY OF THE HOLY FAMILY* *_(Said on the Feast of the Holy Family and throughout the month of February, month of the Holy Family)_* Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy. Christ, hear us. Christ, graciously hear us. God, the Father of Heaven, have mercy on us. God the Son, Redeemer of the world, have mercy on us. God, the Holy Spirit, have mercy on us. Holy Trinity, one God, have mercy on us. (“Pray for us” is repeated as indicated by “…”) Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, … Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, most worthy of our veneration, … Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, called “the Holy Family” from all time, … Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, son, mother, and head of the Holy Family, … Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, divine child, pure spouse, and chaste spouse, … Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, restorers of fallen families, … Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, image of the Blessed Trinity here on earth, … Holy Family, tested by the greatest of difficulties, … Holy Family, with much suffering on the journey to Bethlehem, … Holy Family, without a welcome in Bethlehem, … Holy Family, visited by the poor shepherds, … Holy Family, obliged to live in a stable, … Holy Family, praised by the angels, … Holy Family, venerated by the wise men from the East, … Holy Family, greeted by the pious Simeon in the temple, … Holy Family, persecuted and exiled to a foreign country, … Holy Family, hidden and unknown in Nazareth, … Holy Family, faithful in the observance of divine laws, … Holy Family, perfect model of the Christian family, … Holy Family, center of peace and concord, … Holy Family, whose protector is a model of paternal care, … Holy Family, whose mother is a model of maternal diligence, … Holy Family, whose Divine Child is a model of filial obedience, … Holy Family, poor in material goods, but rich in divine blessings, … Holy Family, as nothing in the eyes of men, but so great in heaven, … Holy Family, our support in life and our hope in death, … Holy Family, patron and protector of our Congregation, … Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, pray for us. Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, spare us, O Lord. Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, hear us, O Lord. Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us. Christ, hear us. Christ, graciously hear us. Let us pray. O God of infinite goodness and kindness, who has deigned to call us to this Family, give us the grace to venerate Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, so that, imitating them in this life, we may enjoy with them the life to come. We ask this through Christ Our Lord. Amen.

Devout Catholic

2/13/2025, 5:07:45 AM

*_February 13th ~ St Catherine De Ricci, Religious; Optional Memorial (Feast Day in the Dominican Order)_* The Ricci are an ancient family, which still subsists in a flourishing condition in Tuscany. Peter de Ricci, the father of our saint, was married to Catherine Bonza, a lady of suitable birth. The saint was born at Florence in 1522, and called at her baptism Alexandrina, but she took the name of Catherine at her religious profession. Having lost her mother in her infancy, she was formed to virtue by a very pious godmother, and whenever she was missing she was always to be found on her knees in some secret part of the house. When she was between six and seven years old, her father placed her in the Convent of Monticelli, near the gates of Florence, where her aunt, Louisa de Ricci, was a nun. This place was to her a paradise: at a distance from the noise and tumult of the world, she served God without impediment or distraction.

Devout Catholic

2/16/2025, 5:47:22 AM

*SIXTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, YEAR C* *REFLECTION* *THEME; THE BEATITUDES, THE CHARTER OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD* What is usually called the “Sermon on the Mount” in Saint Matthew’s Gospel, is generally referred to as the “Sermon on the Plain” in Saint Luke’s Gospel. Both Gospel texts include what are known to us as “the Beatitudes,” words from Jesus for the good of all. Saint Luke describes Jesus as coming down from the mountain and stopping at a level stretch of ground, where a large crowd had gathered to hear the teaching of Jesus and thus the name, “Sermon on the Plain.” We presume that those who were there and listening hoped to find true meaning, genuine riches and lasting nourishment for their lives. For the same reason, to hear God’s words of encouragement, we also willingly listen to God’s Holy Word, Jesus speaking to us in a personal way. In this Sunday’s Gospel it would translated as: “blessed are YOU poor, blessed are YOU hungry, blessed are YOU in mourning, and blessed are YOU who endure persecution.” The words of Jesus are meant to be effective for our lives, not as literature from the distant past to which we listen purely for their historical value. No, the Word of God is living and active, meant to touch the very depths of our being, where we find our need for God, since none of us lives nor dies for self alone. In other words, the teaching of Jesus needs to be adapted to our setting and our particular needs, yet ironically, we all are in need of the same things, as Jesus’ first hearers were, that is, the need to love and be loved without reserve. Each of us has come into being by God’s love. We are precious in God’s sight, so we should be eager to hear all that the Lord is saying to us, who are in special need at all times. We are frail and sinful, yet always being offered a life that cannot be taken away, a life that will satisfy our deepest longings. We call this “our life in Christ,” who is the cause of our hope. We might ask, listening to the Gospel for this Sunday: is a happy, joy-filled life really possible here and now? Jesus seems to be saying clearly that in fact even sorrow can be changed into happiness now for those who keep things in proper perspective and truly desire to live as citizens of God’s kingdom. So much in our culture and times can bog us down and make God’s entry into our lives difficult or impossible. We may prefer that which is not of God and miss the opportunity to allow God to rule in our hearts and lives. The beatitudes (or “blesseds”) of Jesus both amazed and challenged his listeners, and are meant to amaze and challenge us as well. The word beatitude literally means happiness. The way of happiness that Jesus outlines calls for a transformation from within, a conversion of life, which we Benedictines vow to do each day of our life, through the profession we make. But everyone who follows Christ is called to do likewise. The Gospel message, Good News for all people, is summed up well in this familiar phrase from scripture: “Be converted and live.” No one is excluded from this call. That means dying to self, though, and living for God and neighbor without counting the cost. This is unlike what the world describes as happiness, often considered to be found in health, wealth and beauty, which in fact are very fleeting things. The Holy Spirit more easily acts in hearts that are humble and open, making a life in God more possible and visible. This means living our life in conformity with the Gospel message of Jesus Christ, putting God’s ways above our own and cultivating a life of prayer and humble service. But we still might ask: how can one possibly find happiness in poverty, hunger, mourning and persecution as Jesus seems to be saying in the Gospel today? These are things we are taught in our culture to avoid at all costs. If we want to be filled with joy and true peace, and the happiness of heaven, Jesus is telling us we must empty ourselves of all that would shut God out of our hearts. Poverty of spirit means possessing God above all other things. God is the greatest possible treasure, not a fatter bank account, a faster car or eternal youth. All those things pass quickly in this life and can’t be taken to the next. It’s the point well made by the late Reverend Billy Graham, who said he’d never seen a U-haul trailer in a cemetery. Only by finding our nourishment and strength in God is our deepest hunger satisfied. Sorrow and mourning over sin and any wasted time leads to a joyful freedom from the burden of guilt and eternal death, defined as separation from God. God is ready to give to the humble of heart–those who know they need God–real life and genuine happiness. Jesus promises his hearers, including us, that the joys of heaven will more than make up for the troubles and hardships that are a part of every life. And mysteriously, many of the hardships are exactly what bring us to our knees, so to speak, when we finally seek out God without reserve, knowing nothing else can ultimately satisfy our deepest longings. Even in this life we can “taste and see the goodness of the Lord” (Psalm 33.9). The great Doctor of the Church, Saint Thomas Aquinas, who died 1274, said that no person can live without joy. That is why those deprived of spiritual joy seek out other forms of it, only to discover that real joy, what really satisfies and lasts forever, is joy in God. May we know the joy and happiness of belonging to God alone, through Christ our Lord and in the Holy Spirit. May our hunger and thirst not be for material things but for the kingdom of peace and righteousness which God is offering us all. May we find perfect joy in doing the will of God, who lives and reigns forever and ever.

Devout Catholic

2/21/2025, 3:44:25 AM

*_February 21st ~ St Peter Damian, Bishop and Doctor of the Church_* Peter was the youngest child born into a poor but noble family in Ravenna, Italy. After Peter’s parents died, the young boy lived with one of his older brothers who mistreated him and forced him to labor as a swineherd. Eventually, another brother, a priest from Ravenna named Father Damian, took Peter in and provided him with an excellent education. Peter was so grateful to his priest brother that he added his brother’s name to his own, making him Peter Damian. Upon the completion of his education, Peter Damian became a successful teacher. Disenchanted with university life, he withdrew to a monastery in Fonte-Avellana for a forty-day retreat where he discerned a call to monastic life and received the habit. As a monk, Peter Damian lived a secluded life of prayer and extreme penance. He was eventually asked to teach his fellow monks and then did so in neighboring monasteries.

Devout Catholic

2/18/2025, 3:42:30 AM

There the people were to come to wash in and drink of the water of the spring that had welled up from the very spot where Bernadette had been instructed to dig. According to Bernadette, the Lady of her visions was a girl of 16 or 17 who wore a white robe with a blue sash. Yellow roses covered her feet, a large rosary was on her right arm. In the vision on March 25 she told Bernadette, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” It was only when the words were explained to her that Bernadette came to realize who the Lady was. Few visions have ever undergone the scrutiny that these appearances of the Immaculate Virgin were subject to. Lourdes became one of the most popular Marian shrines in the world, attracting millions of visitors. Miracles were reported at the shrine and in the waters of the spring. After thorough investigation Church authorities confirmed the authenticity of the apparitions in 1862. During her life Bernadette suffered much. She was hounded by the public as well as by civic officials until at last she was protected in a convent of nuns. Five years later she petitioned to enter the sisters of Notre Dame. After a period of illness she was able to make the journey from Lourdes and enter the novitiate. But within four months of her arrival she was given the last rites of the Church and allowed to profess her vows. She recovered enough to become infirmarian and then sacristan, but chronic health problems persisted. She died on April 16, 1879, at the age of 35. She was canonized in 1933. *St Bernadette Soubirous, pray for us*

Devout Catholic

2/13/2025, 5:09:58 AM

After some years her father took her home. She continued her usual exercises in the world as much as she was able; but the interruptions and dissipation, inseparable from her station, gave her so much uneasiness that, with the consent of her father, which she obtained, though with great difficulty, in the year 1535, the fourteenth of her age, she received the religious veil in the convent of Dominicanesses at Prat, in Tuscany, to which her uncle, F. Timothy de Ricci, was director. God, in the merciful design to make her the spouse of his crucified Son, and to imprint in her soul dispositions conformable to His, was pleased to exercise her patience by rigorous trials. For two years she suffered inexpressible pains under a complication of violent distempers, which remedies themselves served only to increase. These sufferings she sanctified by the interior dispositions with which she bore them, and which she nourished principally by assiduous meditation on the passion of Christ, in which she found an incredible relish and a solid comfort and joy. After the recovery of her health, which seemed miraculous, she studied more perfectly to die to her senses, and to advance in a penitential life and spirit, in which God had begun to conduct her, by practicing the greatest austerities which were compatible with the obedience she had professed; she fasted two or three days a week on bread and water, and sometimes passed the whole day without taking any nourishment, and chastised her body with disciplines and a sharp iron chain which she wore next her skin. Her obedience, humility, and meekness were still more admirable than her spirit of penance. The least shadow of distinction or commendation gave her inexpressible uneasiness and confusion, and she would have rejoiced to be able to lie hid in the center of the earth, in order to be entirely unknown to and blotted out of the hearts of all mankind, such were the sentiments of annihilation and contempt of herself in which she constantly lived. It was by profound humility and perfect interior self-denial that she learned to vanquish in her heart the sentiments or life of the first Adam—that is, of corruption, sin, and inordinate self-love. But this victory over herself, and purgation of her affections, was completed by a perfect spirit of prayer; for by the union of her soul with God, and the establishment of the absolute reign of his love in her heart, she was dead to and disengaged from all earthly things. And in one act of sublime prayer she advanced more than by a hundred exterior practices in the purity and ardor of her desire to do constantly what was most agreeable to God, to lose no occasion of practicing every heroic virtue, and of vigorously resisting all that was evil. Prayer, holy meditation, and contemplation were the means by which God imprinted in her soul sublime ideas of his heavenly truths, the strongest and most tender sentiments of all virtues, and the most burning desire to give all to God, with an incredible relish and affection for suffering contempt and poverty for Christ. What she chiefly labored to obtain, by meditating on his life and sufferings, and what she most earnestly asked of him, was that he would be pleased, in his mercy, to purge her affections of all poison of the inordinate love of creatures, and engrave in her his most holy and divine image, both exterior and interior–that is to say, both in her conversation and her affections, that so she might be animated, and might think, speak, and act by his most Holy Spirit. The saint was chosen, very young, first, mistress of the novices, then sub-prioress, and, in the twenty-fifth year of her age, was appointed perpetual prioress. The reputation of her extraordinary sanctity and prudence drew her many visits from a great number of bishops, princes, and cardinals-among others, of Cervini, Alexander of Medicis, and Aldobrandini, who all three were afterwards raised to St. Peter’s chair, under the names of Marcellus II, Clement VIII, and Leo XI. Something like what St. Austin relates of St. John of Egypt happened to St. Philip Neri and St. Catherine of Ricci. For having some time entertained together a commerce of letters, to satisfy their mutual desire of seeing each other, whilst he was detained at Rome she appeared to him in a vision, and they conversed together a considerable time, each doubtless being in a rapture. This St. Philip Neri, though most circumspect in giving credit to or in publishing visions, declared, saying that Catherine de Ricci, whilst living, had appeared to him in vision, as his disciple Galloni assures us in his life.1 And the continuators of Bollandus inform us that this was confirmed by the oaths of five witnesses.2 Bacci, in his life of St. Philip, mentions the same thing, and Pope Gregory XV, in his bull for the canonization of St. Philip Neri, affirms that whilst this saint lived at Rome he conversed a considerable time with Catherine of Ricci, a nun, who was then at Prat, in Tuscany.3 Most wonderful were the raptures of St. Catherine in meditating on the passion of Christ, which was her daily exercise, but to which she totally devoted herself every week from Thursday noon to three o’clock in the afternoon on Friday. After a long illness she passed from this mortal life to everlasting bliss and the possession of the object of all her desires, on the feast of the Purification of our Lady, on the 2nd of February, in 1589, the sixty-seventh year of her age. The ceremony of her beatification was performed by Clement XII in 1732, and that of her canonization by Benedict XIV in 1746. Her feast day was deferred to the 13th of February in 1971. *St Catherine De Ricci, pray for us*

Devout Catholic

2/11/2025, 3:55:21 AM

*ST JOHN PAUL II'S PRAYER TO OUR LADY OF LOURDES* *_This prayer was said during the Holy Father's August 15, 2004 visit to Lourdes, France. The Pope asked her among other things to 'be our guide along the paths of the world. '_* Hail Mary, poor and humble Woman, Blessed by the Most High! Virgin of hope, dawn of a new era, We join in your song of praise, to celebrate the Lord’ s mercy, to proclaim the coming of the Kingdom and the full liberation of humanity. Hail Mary, lowly handmaid of the Lord, Glorious Mother of Christ! Faithful Virgin, holy dwelling-place of the Word, Teach us to persevere in listening to the Word, and to be docile to the voice of the Spirit, attentive to his promptings in the depths of our conscience and to his manifestations in the events of history. Hail Mary, Woman of sorrows, Mother of the living! Virgin spouse beneath the Cross, the new Eve, Be our guide along the paths of the world. Teach us to experience and to spread the love of Christ, to stand with you before the innumerable crosses on which your Son is still crucified. Hail Mary, woman of faith, First of the disciples! Virgin Mother of the Church, help us always to account for the hope that is in us, with trust in human goodness and the Father’ s love. Teach us to build up the world beginning from within: in the depths of silence and prayer, in the joy of fraternal love, in the unique fruitfulness of the Cross. Holy Mary, Mother of believers, Our Lady of Lourdes, pray for us. Amen.