+JMJ+ Today is Divine Mercy Sunday. I hope yours is a happy and blessed one. Here are some links to help you observe the day. (Sorry this is later than I’d hoped to post it, Miss Lucy Dawg and I are having some health issues. I’ll post an update about that later. Right now I have to grab a break while she’s taking a siesta. Whew! We’re both getting old.)
Continue reading “Happy and Blessed Divine Mercy Sunday, y’all!”
+JMJ+ I hope your Divine Mercy Sunday has been filled with joy and grace and graces. There are many misconceptions about the Divine Mercy feast and devotion. I hope this brief post will help to clear up some of those. It really is a beautiful thing, the feast, the devotion, the book, all of it.
Continue reading “Divine Mercy Sunday 2022”
+JMJ+ Welcome to part 4 of our Catholic Book of the Month for March 2021, Praying with Jesus and Faustina During Lent: and in Times of Suffering, by Susan Tassone. I’m also going to include some things from the Marian site of the Divine Mercy to help us get ready for Holy Week. Notes and links are at the end of this post.
Continue reading “Book of the Month, March 2021 – Part 4”+JMJ+ Welcome! It’s time for part 3 of the second book in our Catholic Book of the Month series, featuring Praying with Jesus and Faustina During Lent: and in Times of Suffering, by Susan Tassone. If you haven’t gotten a copy of the current Catholic Book of the Month, there are links at the end of the post that you can use if you like. Tonight we’ll be taking a brief look at the section for today, the Fourth Monday of Lent, and chapter 2, Meditations on the Passion and the Way of the Cross with St. Faustina.
Continue reading “Book of the Month, March 2021 – Part 3”+JMJ+ Welcome! It’s time for part 2 of our second Catholic Book of the Month, Praying with Jesus and Faustina During Lent and in Times of Suffering, by Susan Tassone. (Seems to me we could have used this book for the whole year of 2020, right on up to the current Lenten season and, undoubtedly, it will be useful for the rest of the year and well beyond.) There will be notes and links at the end of this post.
Continue reading “Book of the Month, March 2021 – Part 2”
+JMJ+ Welcome! We’re already in the second week of Lent and I’m pausing the Re-Reading the New Age series at least until after Lent and the Easter Season, which means until after Pentecost, and maybe longer. Lent is the time to focus on spiritual practice and true religion. (Re true religion, see the first posts about Scott Hahn’s book, It Is Right and Just, in this series.)
So, now it’s time to announce our 2nd Catholic Book of the Month title. Drum roll, please: Praying with Jesus and Faustina During Lent and in Times of Suffering, by Susan Tassone. (There will be notes and links at the end of this post.)
Continue reading “Book of the Month, March 2021 – Part 1”
+JMJ+ I hope you’re having a happy and blessed All Saints’ Day. I was getting my Divine Mercy tweet ready a few minutes ago (read: a few minutes late, okay, an hour) when I found this in St. Faustina’s Diary:
“On one occasion I heard these words in my soul, Make a novena for your country. This novena will consist of the recitation of the Litany of the Saints. Ask your confessor for permission [probably Father Sopocko or Father Andrasz].”
Kowalska, Saint Maria Faustina. Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska: Divine Mercy in My Soul, (section? paragraph?) 59. Marian Press. Kindle Edition.
That seems like a great idea to me. Pray the Litany of the Saints for our country. And the election! If only I’d thought about putting election stuff on the site sooner, and had found this sooner. But I didn’t find it in the book by searching for anything related to elections. I was looking for something to do with saints to post for All Saints’ Day.
Which brings me back to the reason I began this post to begin with: to send you a heartfelt greeting and to say I hope you’re having a happy and blessed All Saints’ Day, whoever and wherever you are.
Tomorrow is the first Monday of the month so I’ll be posting another part of the Re-Reading the New Age series sometime tomorrow, probably tomorrow night. Until then, may you stay safe and well, virtuous and holy. And may His peace be always with you. God bless you! +JMJ+
+JMJ+ Welcome to part 20 of our weekly series on the soul. Today I was reading a post by Dr. Robert Stackpole at the Divine Mercy website and I want to share it with you. Seems a woman was upset about something written in Divine Mercy In My Soul, St. Faustina’s Diary. The woman took offense “about the way St. Faustina writes of the superiority of the ‘religious’ way to holiness, in constrast to the way of ordinary, lay Christians.” Here’s the part of the letter quoted in the post:
Continue reading “Weekly Series on the Soul, Part 20”
This is a ghost post inspired by a video by Fr Mike Schmitz. (Video below, notes and links at the end of the post.)
“The mere thought of ghosts can give us goose bumps sometimes, but there are still moments when we think ghost stories are just made up to scare us. Maybe it’s time for some real talk about things that go bump in the night, and other stirrings we suspect may be specters. Can souls continue to communicate with the living after they die? In this video, Fr. Mike gives a powerful reason for why he believes they can.” —From “I Ain’t Afraid of No Ghost!” a video by Fr. Mike Schmitz.
When I watched Fr. Mike’s video (see below) I was reminded of what Dom Wiesinger, OSCO, said in his book from earlier in our series. A ghost might not even be a ghost, might not necessarily be a person who has died, but might be a soul coming into contact with another soul, consciously or unconsciously (on either person’s part). We are taught so little about the soul that we do not know how to recognize ghosts, persons alive here and now, and the difference between these and demons.
Continue reading “Did I ever tell you I saw a ghost?”A brief post tonight. June has the potential to be a fruitful month, or perhaps I should say, June looks to be a powerful spiritual-seed-planting month. Today was First Saturday and the Feast of St. Justin Martyr, and the beginning of the novena to the Holy Spirit leading up to Pentecost Sunday on June 9th. (H/T to Msgr. Charles Mangan for pointing that out.) As if that weren’t enough, June is also the month devoted to the Sacred Heart. (There are also links at the end of this post.) [Note: The beginning of the novena was Friday, not Saturday; once again I do not begin a novena on time, sigh.]
I’ve been praying the Rosary using the Five Special Intentions given by Pope St. John Paul II, for use with the Divine Mercy chaplet, for several months. Those intentions are aimed at ending abortion and the whole culture of death. I began adding them to the Rosary threads on Twitter (see the Rosary Project on this site) back when the pro-abortion crowd ramped up their demonic efforts to ram barbaric legislation through in a push that has been more aggressive than any we’ve ever seen in this country. (Links at the end of this post.)
Continue reading “To end the culture of death, pray the Rosary and Chaplet”
I wonder when I’ll get used to having anything delivered on Sunday. This time it was a used book: Purest of All Lilies: The Virgin Mary in the Spirituality of St. Faustina, by Fr. Donald Calloway, MIC. (Links at the end of this post.) The back cover reads that “the Virgin Mary is a spiritual mother of St. Faustina and us” and that the book is an “in-depth study of the very special relationship between the Virgin Mary and St. Faustina.”
Continue reading “Purest of All Lilies”“Before Holy Communion I saw the Blessed Mother inconceivably beautiful. Smiling at me She said to me: ‘My daughter, at God’s command I am to be in a special and exclusive way your Mother; but I desire that you, too, in a special way, be My child” (Diary, 1414).
Fr. George Kosicki, CSB, quoted on the back cover of Purest of All Lilies.
Catholic Heart and Mind 