🧀The Cheese & Crackers = Quotes by St. Charles Borromeo, St. James of the Marches, and St. Leo the Great
🥗The Veggies = My 2💰
🥔The Potatoes = “Servant of God, ADELĖ DIRSYTĖ, martyr” (1909-1955), from angelorum.It
🥩The Meat = “THE HISTORY OF ADVENT”, by Dom Prosper Gueranger (Part 1 of 2)
🍥The Dessert = YouTube video: “Mary: Mother of God”, Advent Retreat, by Mother Miriam (Part 1)
"We should not seek in the Gloria a logical progression of ideas. It is, rather, an impulsive succession of acclamations and words of praise, that spring forth unplanned from the soul. Faith, the freedom of prayer, and a love that knows how to weave all things together: these are the only rules"
🍮“Beloved and most Holy Word of God! You enlighten the hearts of the faithful, you satisfy the hungry, console the afflicted; you make the souls of all productive of good and cause all virtues to blossom; you snatch souls from the devil’s jaw; you make the wretched holy, and men of earth citizens of heaven! Amen.” By St. James of the Marches
🥙“Virtue is nothing without the trial of temptation, for there is no conflict without an enemy, no victory without strife”. By Pope St. Leo the Great
🍼Looking back at my baby pic now, here are the thoughts that would be running across my mind
🍼The following is what you would find
🍼“Things are looking ok for now, but Lord have mercy, what will the future bring, will it be possible to handle?
🍼The Blessed Mother speaks with Jesus by her side: “Everything will be all right, my child, you’ll be covered under my mantle"
🍼Well, as Mediatrix of graces, there is no doubt that to me such things she really will endow
🍼But for my part to sustain the drive, it will be for me to find a way how
🍼Lord have mercy, what will tomorrow bring
🍼Hope it won’t be too painful handling daily, life’s each and every sting
🍼With things to come, will there always be a helping hand to help me handle?
🍼Oh yea, that's right, the covering in life will be the Blessed Mother's mantle
🍼Thank God, that when it was the appointed hour for me to grace the earth
🍼The decision was made to dedicate me to her at birth
🍼So cool is it that Jesus remains ever at His His Mother's right side
🍼That makes possible that for every wave, I can victoriously ride
🍼My sweet heavenly Mother, will never fail to whisper something good in Jesus’ ears
🍼Right then and there He’ll be ready to deliver me from all my fears
🍼Isn't He always saying, be not afraid, be not afraid
🍼365 times in the Bible you can find that this is emphatically being said
🍼Scripture will never fail to enlighten and guide in so many varied ways
🍼So capable it is for turning inside out, our down and out days
🍼Realizing the key to my living free
🍼It’s being ingrained that only the present moment should be considered each day by thee
🍼Instilled in me by my family regarding the need for a good sincere prayer life
🍼Truly an excellent means of dismantling the brick walls of pestering strife
🍼When one is standing on Jesus, the solid rock
🍼No need to fear any plans that darkness can concoct before the crow of the cock
🍼 For sure the road at times will be rocky
🍼 Always people around who will be acting cocky
🍼We won’t necessarily always reside on easy street
🍼But without fail, we'll be rescued by the Good Shepherd, who tends His sheep without skipping a beat
🍼The Sacraments and the Most Holy Liturgy
🍼All instruments to help set captives free
🍼With the help of the holy angels and calling on saint after saint
🍼We'll never succumb to the prevailing feeling of “can’t take this anymore, no I can’t"
🍼Yes, the body of Christ as friends by our side
🍼Coupled with great intentions in the heart to with the Christ to snuggly abide
🍼Peace, peace, will then be the gift, one that we most certainly should very highly prize
🍼Not as the world gives and takes, but from the Master a guarantee from sunset to sunrise
🍼Truly, how great is our God who created each and everyone for a reason and a purpose
🍼From cradle to the grave, every step of the way He’ll always be present to, with, and for us
🍼So no need for worry warts to ever worry about a thing
🍼It’s to just keep the faith, living surrendered to love from the heart and God praises to forever sing
🍼By the power of the Holy Spirit we have it made
🍼Sheltered from the sweltering heat generated by worry, because of His Divine shade
tmm/TruGIG
📖Psalms 139:13-16 “You formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother’s womb. I praise you, because I am wonderfully made; wonderful are your works!My very self you know. My bones are not hidden from you, When I was being made in secret, fashioned in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw me unformed; in your book all are written down; my days were shaped, before one came to be”
📖Psalms 121:2-8 “My help comes from the LORD, the maker of heaven and earth. He will not allow your foot to slip; or your guardian to sleep.
Behold, the guardian of Israel never slumbers nor sleeps. The LORD is your guardian;The LORD is your guardian; the LORD is your shade at your right hand. By day the sun will not strike you, nor the moon by night. The LORD will guard you from all evil; he will guard your soul. The LORD will guard your coming and going both now and forever”
Info from this site:
http://angelorum.lt/en/dievo-tarnai/adele-dirsyte-1909-1955/
“An organized resistance against Soviet occupation, which struggled for Lithuanian independence, was established in the capital toward the end of 1944. Adelė participated in their activity as well and worked for the strengthening of her people’s religious and national traditions. On March 06, 1946, she was arrested for hiding and abetting a person who had escaped from Soviet security arrest. She and a group of resistance fighters were tried by a military tribunal on 11 November. Accused of participating in the “counterrevolutionary activities” of Ateitis, Adelė was sentenced to ten years in a concentration camp and to five years of restriction of her rights.
In the summer of 1947, Adelė and several other inmates were removed from their Vilnius prison to the forced labor camp of Chuma (Komi Autonomous Republic, Russia). Life there was extremely difficult, excessive physical work being aggravated by poor nutrition, lack of hygiene, and intense cold weather. All these affected Adelė’s delicate health. During moments of respite, however, she energetically organized conversations and discussions among the women inmates. Together they celebrated religious feast days and recited the rosary, made of bread beads under their plank-beds.Although the hard labor in Magadan enervated Adelė further, she continued her surreptitious ministry among young Lithuanian women.
One day, a priest was detained in the nearby camp for men. Adelė, with the assistance of Juozas Brazauskas, a like-minded person from the men’s camp, arranged for the Eucharist to be brought to the women’s camp and distributed to Lithuanians. This activity was noticed soon enough by informants of the Soviet guards. From then on, Adelė was regularly stopped while going to and returning from work and beaten in a cold underground cell. She hardly complained about these, but her companions noted her increasing number of bruises and contusions during their bath. It dawned on them that she had already been marked for slow extermination. Adelė calmed them, saying that their guards were poor people they had to pray for. She asked them to continue writing down their personal prayers. Adelė herself wrote hers down wherever she could – sometimes on a birch bark – and rewrote them upon arriving at their camp. One of her inmates recalled: “I used to see that she suffered a lot. But she always offered her sufferings to Mary, Mother of God, for Lithuania. Tortured in this way, she became very weak, her head and breast often ached. After one interrogation, she was spitting up blood for a long time, her face swelled. Only later did she admit that all her teeth had been knocked out.”
In late autumn of 1953, on her return from work, Adelė was taken to the punishment cell for a week and then taken away to a mysterious location for the duration of winter. Adelė was brought back to her camp the following April, already mentally broken. Having found out about this, the young women collected food they had and in the evening came to Adelė. Her hair had been cut short and she was disheveled and heavily bruised. She recognized the girls and ate the bread and fish the had brought. However, when they asked her about where she had been, she began to toss wildly and call for her parents. She spoke of her torture only once: “She talked to me for a long time and I saw tears rolling down her cheeks for the first time. She said that there were very cruel interrogators in that place, especially one who tore out half of her hair. She showed me the scabs on her head.”
Toward the end of 1954, Adelė was moved to the section for the mentally ill in the camp hospital. She was very withdrawn and refused to eat. Her young inmates visited her but Adelė refused to take the food they brought for her. “No. I do not work, so I cannot eat. You who work must eat.” She wasted away rapidly. Adelė was not among the Lithuanian prisoners removed from Magadan in November 1955. A death certificate from the hospital claimed that she had died already on 26 September 1955 in Khabarovsk (Khabarovskiy kray, Russia). With the memory of the teacher’s martyrdom persisting even after the democratization of Lithuania, the archdiocese of Kaunas began to work for Adelė Dirsytė’s beatification. The Congregation of the Causes of Saints issued the decree nihil obstat for her cause on 14 January 2000.”
Info from this site: https://sensusfidelium.us/the-liturgical-year-dom-prosper-gueranger/advent/the-history-of-advent/
📖Isaiah 7:14 “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign; the young woman, pregnant and about to bear a son, shall name him Emmanuel”
📖Isaiah 9:5-6 “For a child is born to us, a son is given to us; is born to us, a son is given to us; upon his shoulder dominion rests.They name him Wonder-Counselor, God-Hero, dFather-Forever, Prince of Peace. His dominion is vast and forever peaceful, Upon David’s throne, and over his kingdom, which he confirms and sustainsBy judgment and justice, both now and forever.eThe zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this!”
“THE HISTORY OF ADVENT, the name Advent [From the Latin word Adventus, which signifies a coming] is applied, in the Latin Church, to that period of the year, during which the Church requires the faithful to prepare for the celebration of the feast of Christmas, the anniversary of the birth of Jesus Christ. The mystery of that great day had every right to the honour of being prepared for by prayer and works of penance; and, in fact, it is impossible to state, with any certainty, when this season of preparation (which had long been observed before receiving its present name of Advent) was first instituted. It would seem, however, that its observance first began in the west, since it is evident that Advent could not have been looked on as a preparation for the feast of Christmas, until that feast was definitively fixed to the twenty-fifth of December; which was done in the east only towards the close of the fourth century; whereas it is certain that the Church of Rome kept the feast on that day at a much earlier period.
We must look upon Advent in two different lights: first, as a time of preparation, properly so called, for the birth of our Saviour, by works of penance; and secondly, as a series of ecclesiastical Offices drawn up for the same purpose. We find, as far back as the fifth century, the custom of giving exhortations to the people in order to prepare them for the feast of Christmas. We have two sermons of Saint Maximus of Turin on this subject, not to speak of several others which were formerly attributed to St. Ambrose and St. Augustine, but which were probably written by St. Cesarius of Aries. If these documents do not tell us what was the duration and what the exercises of this holy season, they at least show us how ancient was the practice of distinguishing the time of Advent by special sermons. Saint Ivo of Chartres, St. Bernard, and several other doctors of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, have left us set sermons de Adventu Domini, quite distinct from their Sunday homilies on the Gospels of that season. In the capitulariaof Charles the Bald, in 846, the bishops admonish that prince not to call them away from their Churches during Lent or Advent, under pretext of affairs of the State or the necessities of war, seeing that they have special duties to fulfil, and particularly that of preaching during those sacred times.
The oldest document in which we find the length and exercises of Advent mentioned with anything like clearness, is a passage in the second book of the History of the Franks by St. Gregory of Tours, where he says that St. Perpetuus, one of his predecessors, who held that see about the year 480, had decreed a fast three times a week, from the feast of St. Martin until Christmas. It would be impossible to decide whether St. Perpetuus, by his regulations, established a new custom, or merely enforced an already existing law. Let us, however, note this interval of forty, or rather of forty-three days, so expressly mentioned, and consecrated to penance, as though it were a second Lent, though less strict and severe than that which precedes Easter.
Later on, we find the ninth canon of the first Council of Mâcon, held in 582, ordaining that during the same interval between St. Martin’s day and Christmas, the Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, should be fasting days, and that the Sacrifice should be celebrated according to the lenten rite.
Not many years before that, namely in 567, the second Council of Tours had enjoined the monks to fast from the beginning of December till Christmas. This practice of penance soon extended to the whole forty days, even for the laity: and it was commonly called St. Martin’s Lent. The capitularia of Charlemagne, in the sixth book, leave us no doubt on the matter; and Rabanus Maurus, in the second book of his Institution of clerics, bears testimony to this observance. There were even special rejoicings made on St. Martin’s feast, just as we see them practised now at the approach of Lent and Easter.
The obligation of observing this Lent, which, though introduced so imperceptibly, had by degrees acquired the force of a sacred law, began to be relaxed, and the forty days from St. Martin’s day to Christmas were reduced to four weeks. We have seen that this fast began to be observed first in France; but thence it spread into England. as we find from Venerable Bede’s history; into Italy, as appears from a diploma of Astolphus, king of the Lombards, dated 753; into Germany, Spain, &c., of which the proofs may be seen in the learned work of Dom Martène, On the ancient rites of the Church. The first allusion to Advent’s being reduced to four weeks is to be found in the ninth century, in a letter of Pope St. Nicholas I to the Bulgarians. The testimony of Ratherius of Verona, and of Abbo of Fleury, both writers of the tenth century, goes also to prove that, even then, the question of reducing the duration of the Advent fast by one-third was seriously entertained. It is true that St. Peter Damian, in the eleventh century, speaks of the Advent fast as still being for forty days; and that St. Louis, two centuries later, kept it for that length of time; but as far as this holy king is concerned, it is probable that it was only his own devotion which prompted him to this practice.
The discipline of the Churches of the west, after having reduced the time of the Advent fast, so far relented, in a few years, as to change the fast into a simple abstinence; and we even find Councils of the twelfth century, for instance Selingstadt in 1122, and Avranches in 1172, which seem to require only the clergy to observe this abstinence. The Council of Salisbury, held in 1281, would seem to expect none but monks to keep it. On the other hand (for the whole subject is very confused, owing, no doubt, to there never having been any uniformity of discipline regarding it in the western Church), we find Pope Innocent III, in his letter to the bishop of Braga, mentioning the custom of fasting during the whole of Advent, as being at that time observed in Rome; and Durandus, in the same thirteenth century, in his Rational on the Divine Offices, tells us that, in France, fasting was uninterruptedly observed during the whole of that holy time”
Video link:
https://youtu.be/1_NczfKdfyI