🧀The Cheese & Crackers = Quotes by St. Catherine of Siena, St. Mary MacKillop, and St. Paul VI
🌽The Veggies = My 2💰
🍟The Potatoes = Book: “The Blessed Eucharist”, Fr. Michael Müller (Part II of IV)
🍗The Meat = “The Priestly Life and Witness of St. John XXIII”, by Fr. Roger Landry (Part V of VII)
🍰The Dessert = YouTube Video: “Spiritual Warfare and Communism, “Children”, by Fr. Chad Ripperger (Part 03 Segment 15)
🔖 Do not let your troubles disturb your trust in God.” By St. Mary MacKillop
🏷 “The Holy Spirit also gives you the grace to discover the image of the Lord in the hearts of men, and teaches you to love them as brothers and sisters. Again, He helps you to see the manifestations of His love in events. If we are humbly attentive to men and things, the Spirit of Jesus enlightens us and enriches us with His wisdom, provided that we are imbued with the spirit of prayer.” St. Paul VI
🙌🏼Without the Good God’s love and mercy
🙌🏼Good God Almighty
🙌🏼May in your presence praising you be what she aims to do chiefly
🙌🏼Good God Almighty supreme is your sovereignty
🙌🏼 The response you desire is living obediently
🙌🏼 To that, there’s no mystery
🙌🏼 Her mansion is prepared in eternity
🙌🏼 You embrace her, in a way tender and very lovingly
🙌🏼 It’s a constant, happening without fail, daily
🙌🏼 Graces being poured out copiously
🙌🏼In a manner ever so graciously
🙌🏼 May her beautiful eyes be wide open to see
🙌🏼 At all times, how God Almighty is at work providently
🙌🏼 Such knowledge dictates acting confidently
🙌🏼 Then peace will prevail, as the truth rushes in to set her free
🙌🏼 Doors close, windows open, but it’s all about waiting patiently
🙌🏼 Coming to the rescue without delay will be The Good God powerfully
🙌🏼 No need for ever feeling panicky
🙌🏼 An assured victory will be what is experienced inevitably
🙌🏼 Only one, and one alone can we find fully in charge, all powerful and operating invincibly
🙌🏼The Lord God, maker of heaven and earth, is it not He?
🙌🏼Well then, to speak candidly
🙌🏼 Abiding in Christ, Christy dear, you have it made in the shade, and that’s putting it mildly
🙌🏼 Who or what can be against when the Good God Almighty Himself fights defensively
🙌🏼Hands down the proclaimed victory is yours now and forever more, dear Christy
🙌🏼 Celebrate the wonders that are stored up, the marvelous deeds and goodness of the Good God being poured out lavishly
🙌🏼 The joy of the Lord is your strength, so time to rejoice and be happy, yes, exceedingly happy
🙌🏼 Thanks be to God the above applies not just to Christy, but to you and to me
🙌🏼 Covered with so much love and undeserved kindness let us all rejoice in the Lord gladly
tmm/TruGIG
Info from this site:
http://www.catholictradition.org/Eucharist/blessed-eucharist7.htm
“I will therefore pass on to consider the manner in which we ought to make our thanksgiving. What has been said in regard to preparation is, of course, equally true here, viz., that each one is free to use such prayers as he shall find most suited to his devotion. My object is only to show in what a good thanksgiving essentially consists. Now it consists first in completing the union with Our Lord, which He has come to effect, by a sincere oblation of ourselves to Him. The moment of Communion is different from any other moment of our lives. Then we can truly exclaim, "My God and my All!" When we communicate, God Himself is present in our little hearts as our Friend and Bridegroom. Nothing can be more intimate than the union that then takes place between the Creator and His creatures. It is more like the Incarnation of the Eternal Son of God in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary than anything else. To her it was said,
📖 Luke 1:35 And the angel said to her in reply, “The holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.
And the same Son of God, the Holy One, that was born of the spotless Virgin, comes into our hearts in the Sacred Host. Think of all that is most beautiful and most precious in the world, of all the riches of the whole universe, of all the glory of Heaven, and you have as yet but a faint idea of the wealth of a soul that has received Holy Communion. Such a soul possesses not only earth and Heaven, but the Lord and Maker of Heaven and earth. It is a mystery which almost baffles thought. Certainly God can never cease to be what He is; He can never cease to be awful [to fill with awe-----Web Master.] in His Greatness and Infinite in His Wisdom-----our Ruler, our King and our Judge-----but in this Sacrament, as if He had nothing to think of but the soul which He comes to visit, He lavishes upon her all the riches of His bounty and reveals Himself to her in no other but the most amiable and most humble manner. Perhaps it is for this reason that He has been pleased so often to manifest Himself as an Infant in the Sacred Host, in order to show us how small He has become for love of us and to take away from us all fear.
Of old it was said, Magnus Dominus et laudabilis nimis. "Great is the Lord and exceedingly to be praised. " But now we may rather say: Parvus Dominus et amabilis nimis. "Small is the Lord and exceedingly to be loved." Accordingly, we find from the expressions of the Saints that the thought which possessed their souls after Communion was admiration at the unutterable love of God. St. Mary Magdalen de Pazzi once asked a pious person after Communion what she was thinking of. "Of love," was her reply. "Yes," rejoined the Saint, "when we think of the immense love of Jesus Christ for us, we cannot think of anything else." It is related of Artaxerxes, King of Persia, that when he saw Themistocles, his dearest friend, he exclaimed, in a transport of joy: "I have Themistocles, Themistocles I have!" With how much greater joy should not the soul exclaim after Communion: "I have my Jesus, my Jesus I have! I have found Him Whom my soul loves! I will keep Him, and not leave Him!" It is not, however, enough to wonder at our Saviour's love. Love must be mutual to produce union; and we must return Him love for love. Now is the time to repay Him for the trials and tears, the shame and sorrow, the contradiction and reproach which He underwent for the ransom of our souls.
They were already His by the title of creation, and now they belong to Him by the title of Redemption. We must make to Him a childlike, generous, sincere, and complete oblation. "But what," you say, "have I to offer? I am poor and indigent; I stand in need of everything. What can I give to the Lord, Who made Heaven and earth?" I will tell you. Imitate Aeschines, a disciple of Socrates, of whom Seneca relates that, not being able on account of his poverty to make such rich presents to his master as his fellow disciples did, he went out and said to him: "Master, my extreme poverty leaves me nothing to give you as a token of my gratitude; I offer you, then, myself, to be yours forever." "Truly," said Socrates, "you have given me more than all the rest." Act thus with Jesus Christ. You have no treasure to offer Him; you have no station to renounce for Him; you have no occasion to die for Him; you cannot do for Him what He has done for you, but you can give Him that which He values more than anything else-----your heart. There is nothing that gives so much pleasure to Jesus Christ as a heart truly resolved to serve Him. Give Him, then, this pleasure; offer yourself to Him to be disposed of as He pleases; to receive indifferently at His hand bitter and sweet; to serve Him with all the fervor that you can; to avoid sin and to lead a Christian life. Do this, and then your Communion will really be a Communion, that is to say, a union with God.
To receive the Body of Christ is common to the good and the bad, but it is the good alone who are truly united to Him. Are you perhaps afraid to make such promises? "It is easy," I hear you say, "to make an offering of ourselves to Jesus Christ, but it is not so easy to carry it into effect." Oh, Christian soul, thou dost not yet understand the generosity of love! Did not Our Lord ask St. James and St. John whether they were ready to drink of the chalice that He would drink of, before He actually gave them the grace of Martyrdom? Did He not make us promise to renounce the devil and his works and his pomps and to live in obedience to the Christian law before He adopted us as His children in Baptism? We must first promise much, and then God will help us to do much. He comes into our hearts, not only to claim them as His Own, but to give us grace whereby we may truly make them His. After we have made an oblation of ourselves to Him, then we must immediately proceed to beg of Him the grace to fulfill that which we have promised-----and this is the second part of a good thanksgiving.”
Info from this site: http://www.catholicpreaching.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/The-Priestly-Life-and-Witness-of-John-XXIII-Copy.pdf
• From unity of the Church in Leo to the Second Vatican Council
• Venerable Brethren, the fifteenth centenary of the death of St. Leo the Great finds the Catholic Church in much the same plight as she was at the turn of the fifth century. The same waves of bitter hostility break upon her. How many violent storms does she not enter in these days of ours—storms that trouble Our fatherly heart, even though our Divine Redeemer clearly forewarned us of them! ... To rid the Church of these dangers We confidently invoke the patronage of that most vigilant of Popes who labored and wrote and suffered so much for the cause of Catholic unity
✝️Paenitentiam Agere, “Penance for sins,” on the need for the practice of interior and exterior penance, July 1, 1962
• In 1962, he published the encyclical Paenitentiam Agere on the gift of God’s mercy and the need for us to recognize our need for it, come to receive it in the Sacrament of Penance, and do interior and exterior penance. This was, he declared, the best way to prepare for the Council, so that the “good seed that the Council will scatter far and wide over the Church in those days [will] not be allowed to go to waste,” but rather find “hearts that are ready and prepared, loyal and true.” The fruits of the Council would happen in abundance, he believed, only if the soil of receptivity had been fertilized with God’s mercy. One might argue that among the reasons for the chaos, confusion, and dissent that occurred in the Church after Vatican II was that John’s summons to conversion, penance and mercy wasn’t adequately followed.
📖 2 Chronicles 7:14 if then my people, upon whom my name has been pronounced, humble themselves and pray, and seek my face and turn from their evil ways, I will hear them from heaven and pardon their sins and heal their land.
• “Doing penance for one's sins is a first step towards obtaining forgiveness and winning eternal salvation. That is the clear and explicit teaching of Christ, and no one can fail to see how justified and how right the Catholic Church has always been in constantly insisting on this. She is the spokesman for her divine Redeemer. No individual Christian can grow in perfection, nor can Christianity gain in vigor, except it be on the basis of penance.”
• That is why in Our Apostolic Constitution officially proclaiming the Second Ecumenical Vatican Council and urging the faithful to make a worthy spiritual preparation for this great event by prayer and other acts of Christian virtue, We included a warning to them not to overlook the practice of voluntary mortification. And now, as the day for the opening of the Second Vatican Council draws nearer, We wish to repeat that request of Ours and dwell on it at greater length.
✝️Pacem in Terris, “Peace on Earth,” On establishing universal peace in truth, justice, charity and liberty, April 11, 1963
• Peace on Earth—which man throughout the ages has so longed for and sought after—can never be established, never guaranteed, except by the diligent observance of the divinely established order
• In this work, John XXIII reacted to the political situation in the middle of the Cold War. The "peace encyclical" was issued only two years after the erection of the Berlin Wall and only a few months after the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Pope explains in this encyclical that conflicts "should not be resolved by recourse to arms, but rather by negotiation." He further emphasizes the importance of respect of human rights as an essential consequence of the Christian understanding of men. He clearly establishes "...That every man has the right to life, to bodily integrity, and to the means which are suitable for the proper development of life..."
• The document is divided into four sections.
☄️The first section of the encyclical establishes the relationship between
individuals and mankind, encompassing the issues of human rights and moral duties.
☄️The second section addresses the relationship between man and state, dwelling on the collective authority of the latter.
☄️The third section establishes the need for equality amongst nations and the need for the state to be subject to rights and duties that the individual must abide by.
☄️The final section presents the need for greater relations between nations, thus resulting in collective states assisting other states. The encyclical ends with the urging of Catholics to assist non-Christians and non-Catholics in political and social aspects
• Death
☄️Diagnosed with stomach cancer September 23, 1962. It was kept from the public for some time. It led to stomach hemorrhages.
☄️On May 25, he discovered that the cancer would kill him, that there was nothing that could be done. His siblings came. He was confined to his bed.
☄️He died on June 3, 1963 of peritonitis caused by a perforated stomach at 19:50 (local time: 7:49pm) at the age of 81, ending a historic pontificate of four years and seven months.
☄️Last words: “At 11 am Petrus Canisius Van Lierde as Papal Sacristan was at the bedside of the dying pope, ready to anoint him. The pope began to speak for the very last time: "I had the great grace to be born into a Christian family, modest and poor, but with the fear of the Lord. My time on earth is drawing to a close. But Christ lives on and continues his work in the Church. Souls, souls, ut omnes unum sint."
☄️Pope Francis, on 50th anniversary of his death, said: “Exactly 50 years ago, at this very time, Blessed John XXIII departed this world. Those who, like myself, have reached a certain age have vivid memories of the emotion that spread everywhere in those days. St Peter’s Square had become an open-air shrine, welcoming by day and by night faithful of all ages and social backgrounds, fearful and praying for the Pope’s health. The whole world had recognized Pope John as a pastor and father; a pastor because he was a father.
• Beatification/canonization
☄️There’s been a lot of criticism about some of Pope Francis’ recent decisions to do equivalent canonizations of two Jesuits Peter Faber and Jose de Anchieta and two French missionaries in Canada, Marie de L’Incarnation and François de Laval as well as to suspend the need for a second miracle for John XXIII. The concern is about apologetics and the fact that at least with miracles we’re able to say to those challenging Catholic devotions to the saints that since God alone can do miracles, God must want a particular holy man or woman exalted in other’s eyes by granting miracles through that person’s specific intercession.
☄️The point may still be valid but when one hears of the miracle that happened for his beatification, that person will probably not have any issues with Pope John’s intercession .
☄️There was an Italian religious, Sister Caterina Capitani, of Congregation of the Daughters of Charity who in 1966 was 22. Her sisters prayed for her after she had a hemorrhage following an operation.
☄️Sister Caterina attested in the days leading up to John’s beatification in 2000:
✝️“On May 22, a sister brought me a relic of Pope John’s from Rome: a piece of the sheet. upon which the Pope had died. I placed it on the perforation which had opened on my stomach, and since I was suffering quite a bit, I prayed to the Pope to take me to Heaven. I was slowly dying. I felt that my strength was leaving me. My temperature was very high. A sister guarded the room day and night. On 25 May, at around 2:30 in the afternoon, I asked a sister who was guarding the room to close the window a little because the light bothered me. She did so, and then left the room for a few minutes. I drifted off to sleep. At a certain point I felt a hand pressing the wound on my stomach and the voice of a man saying: :Sister Caterina, Sister Caterina.” I thought it was Doctor Zannini, who came to check on me occasionally. I turned towards the voice, and saw Pope John standing beside my bed: he had the same smile as the image that had been given me. He was the one who was holding his hand on my wound. “You prayed to me very much,” he said with a calm voice. “Many people have prayed to me, but especially one. You have really taken this miracle from my heart. But don’t be afraid now, you are healed. Ring the bell, call the sisters who are in the chapel, have them take your temperature and you will see that you will not have even the slightest temperature. Eat whatever you want, as you did before the sickness: I will hold my hand on your wound, and you will be healed. Go to the Doctor, have him examine you, have some x-rays done and have it all written down, because these things will be needed someday.”
✝️“The vision disappeared, and only then did I begin to realize what had happened. I wondered whether it had been a dream. I was trembling from the emotion and fear. I felt well. I felt no pain, but I didn’t dare call the sisters: they would have thought I was crazy. After several minutes, I had to decide. I did what the Pope had told me to: I rang the bell. The sisters hurried to my bedside. They found me sitting up on the bed. They looked at me as if they were dreaming. I could no longer stifle my joy, and I almost shouted: ‘I have been healed. It was Pope John. Measure my fever, you’ll see that I have none.’ Mother Superior thought I was delirious, as sometimes happens before death. They took my temperature: 36.8 C (98.2 F.). ‘Do you see?’, I said, challenging them. ‘Now give me something to eat because I’m hungry.’ I hadn’t been able to hold anything down in my stomach for many months. Mother Superior, who was almost hypnotized by my state of excitement, ordered the sisters to do as I asked. A sister brought me some semolina (bread/cake), which I ate voraciously, to the astonishment of my sisters. Then they brought me an ice cream, and I ate that too. ‘I’m still hungry’, I said. The sister brought me some meatballs, and I ate those, followed by some soup, and I devoured that as well.
✝️“At this point, the Mother Superior, who was still not convinced of what was happening, said: ‘Now we have to change you,’ thinking that everything I had eaten had gone out of the fistula that had opened on my stomach, which is what always happened. They lay me down on the bed. A nurse brought gauze and a clean nightgown. They uncovered me. The nurse shouted: ‘But there’s nothing here.’ The sisters fell on their knees, crying from emotion. Until a few minutes earlier the skin on my stomach had been one big wound: the gastric fluids that continually flowed out of the fistula had corroded the skin. The wound had completely disappeared. There was no sign of the fistula, not a trace: the skin was smooth, clean and white. So I told them what had happened.
✝️“From that day on,” concludes Sister Caterina, “I haven’t been ill at all. The doctors examined me, did scores of x-rays. There wasn’t a trace of my illness. The day after the miracle I went back to a normal life. My first lunch was french fries, roasted lamb, tomatoes and ice cream. I went back to eating anything I wanted. That was 34 years ago: I’m well, I have no problems of digestion, and I work with enthusiasm.”
📖 1 Chronicles 16:29-34 “Give to the LORD the glory due his name!Bring gifts, and come before him;bow down to the LORD, splendid in holiness.
Tremble before him, all the earth;the world will surely stand fast, never to be moved. Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice;let them say among the nations: The LORD is king. Let the sea and what fills it resound;let the plains be joyful and all that is in them! Then let all the trees of the forest exultbefore the LORD, who comes, who comes to rule the earth. Give thanks to the LORD, who is good, Give thanks to the LORD, who is good, whose love endures forever”
Video link: https://youtu.be/UHplVPm0xhQ