I Wish Everyday Could be Christmas

+JMJ

Dear friends in Christ! It is true! Christmas is indeed every day! Every Mass Christ is born yet again in the hands of our Holy Priests! He again humbles himself to give Himself to us in this most blessed sacrament. What a great gift we receive when we assist at Mass and receive Christ. There could be no greater joy or greater worship to God than the Mass. Angels flock in the thousands at every Mass and adore the Savior of the world, the Word made flesh. They sing their angelic hymns of worship and praise and adore the Christ child born on the altar and who sacrifices Himself for the sake of mankind. Blessed are we truly to be able to receive such a grace and blessing. O Lord, humble us to know your true greatness and majesty. May the world come to know and love your loving and merciful heart.

Lord, Thy Will Be Done!

Art

+JMJ

Praised be Jesus Christ! Greetings yet once again. Today I am rather distraught by modern art. No, not contemporary art. That stuff can get kinda weird. Modern art is stuff like cubism, expressionism, surrealism, and a few others. Yes, I know those styles can also get kinda weird as well. Anyways, I am distraught because I am supposed to paint/draw a expressionist landscape or interior. I wanted to do the inside of a lovely Cathedral, but they are all pretty far away. Then I wanted to do the chapel at Corpus Christi Monastery, but I don't have any good photos for reference. So, I came up with a library or huge study to work on. My only issue with this would be making the numerous books defined, but also have some emotional weight to them. I made some nice oil pastel drawings of certain parts of my idea, but I will have a handful to work with when it comes to the hundreds of books I am going to have to put in there. I liked the sketches very much and would love to carry them over, but it will take lots of work to get it to how I am imagining it to look.

Expressionism is hard. Arg. Sculpture was so much easier to work with when dealing with Modern Art movements. Now painting and drawing, on the other hand, is a whole new ball park. St. Luke, patron of artists, pray for me!

Blogger Ate my HTML

+JMJ

I just wanted to play around a bit and now it won't accept my old blog's HTML... it was fine before I started goofing around. Now suddenly there is an error that was not there a minute ago?
Well, there goes my way cool looking blog with all it's cool grey-ness and graphics. Guess this is my project for this year: Learn HTML so I can actually make a cool looking blog that works. Darn the graphic designer in me!

In other news, I'm going to bed early tonight. I am currently going on 4.5 hours of sleep and I am pretty surprised I am still up and functioning. Perhaps I can wake up somewhat early and get some school work done and maybe even some leisurely reading! Sigh... The cold isn't too bad though. I thought that the 2 degrees we had this evening about 5:15pm was lovely weather for sitting outside to eat some canned peaches. It is times like these when I really can appreciate the joys of long johns. Thank you Ukraine for your many wonderful lessons!

And in sports tonight, I have nothing sports related to say. Yeah, the Bears lost... Colts won. Okay, that's nice. Instead, I bring news about Catholic Stuff happening on campus. Praised be Jesus Christ that I will actually be able to participate and do many things this semester. One of which will be Mass with Cardinal George and the new Bishop of Joliet, Bishop Sartain, on Thursday, February 13th. I am quite looking forward to it. It will be at St. Vincent DePaul Parish at DePaul University, Chicago. I am quite curious as to what the church looks like. I guess that will be one more thing before I head off to bed tonight. And speaking of which, it is getting to be late, so I will leave things off here for now. God bless you all abundantly!

Lord, Thy Will Be Done!

The Wonders of the Mass

+JMJ

Praised be Jesus Christ! To the few that still read or occasionally stop by to see if I have actually written anything, hello! Forgive my long hiatus. School, work, and other things tend to get the better of me and my time. Today, I wanted to share some of the great insight from a recent reading of the very short The Wonders of the Mass by Fr. Paul O'Sullivan, O.P. Fr. O'Sullivan has written a number of beautiful short books, one of which is one of my favorites, All About the Angels. The Wonders of the Mass is more or less a 'pamphlet' rather than a book considering it has only 42 pages and is about 6 inches tall, but it is still an awe-inspiring book.

Fr. O'Sullivan writes so simply and eloquently about the many graces available just by fully participating in the Mass and it is the highest form of praise both on earth and in heaven! Although I had heard this a number of times before, he goes slightly more in depth with the multitude of angels present at every Mass and how they bow down to the priest who gives us from his hands Our Lord and Savior. The book also spoke most highly of priests and the wonderful things they give to us. May God bless our holy priests! There is just so much said in the short 42 pages that just sets your heart on fire for love of the Mass. It is amazing how many little things there are in the Mass that many do not notice nor care to look into that could bring them closer to Christ and help them to understand the awesome power of the Mass.

I pray that we may all be able to love and understand the beauty and the power of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. God Bless you all abundantly!

Lord, Thy Will Be Done!

It's been too long...

+JMJ
It's been much too long since I have made a post here. I thought I would leave a little here so as not to think I have gone MIA. There will be more posts here in the future, but for now, things will be a little slow and drawn out. I have been quite busy and I am sure that little will be changing in the near future. God bless you all abundantly!

Lord, Thy Will Be Done!

Some Previous Rambling

+JMJ

I wrote this quite a long while ago. It does need quite a bit of work, but I stumbled across it and read it today... Felt like I should share.

We are nothing but dust, yet we act as if we are superior or equal to God in many cases. We walk with our noses in the air, taking each step deliberately so as to have an air of superiority. We take immense pride in our talents, appearances, and property. Yet we are to be humble people. We are called to be humble like Christ, the Divine, who humbled himself so as to come into our presence, taking on the form of lowly man. Yes, we are loved immensely and truly, but we act as if though we are loved more than others. Our gifts and talents are not something to be shown off nor paraded around. We have such a tendency to allow for pride in everything we do. We let little room for humility to come into our lives. Christ has called us to love one another as He has loved us. Pride does not love. We walk with pride even in our Churches, especially those who have been allowed a special duty. We find ourselves exempt from participating fully and allow for Mass to become a stage show to exhibit our talents and property. Our duty becomes more important than Christ. It is terrible to sit and watch the self-importance and self-love throw Christ aside like an ordinary newspaper, when in fact, He is the Word Incarnate! Our voices, as beautiful as they may be, were not made for human pleasures, but rather for praise of God. Our bodies, as lovely as they may be, are not meant for human pleasures, but as a temple for the Holy Spirit and for the Greater Glory of God! Our property should only be that which we need to survive our earthly pilgrimage, nothing outside of our needs should be supplied. God has given to us all we need, but we find we must find pleasure in earthly human things, especially self-love, and find that we need to give ourselves more and we must become the superior and best there is. We find no room for humility in our overcrowded lives and hearts. I say, clean yourselves of all this excess. Leave it all behind. Humbly continue the pilgrimage and kill the pride that has taken hold of you. Let not the evil one trick you into falling into the terrible sin of pride. “From pride all perdition took its beginning” (Tob 4:14). If you rid yourself of pride and embrace humility with all your being, you will find yourself being rid of other sins and temptations, for pride is in all sins. Examine your conscience and pray that God will allow you to see the self-love and pride within each of these sins. Pray that we all will be freed from the chains of this serious and disastrous sin.

A Sudden Desire

+JMJ

It has been quite sometime since I have really desired within myself the religious life. Suddenly today, I feel such a strong desire. It is almost flame like, engulfing my heart in love. I feel it may have to do with reading Showings by Julian of Norwich. It is such a simple and straightforward text, but at the same time filled to the brim with such a rich and deep love of God. It is beautiful. I am not quite through it all and I have more than half of it to finish, but it is just so beautiful in the way that the love of God shines forth so brilliantly.

I feel such a desire for God although it has been sometime since it feels like I have had a sincere desire for Him. There have been times where I have broken down into tears just telling Jesus, I know I need You, but I can't hold on to You! I want You but I need to do better and stay closer to You.

Jesus I need You.

Lord, Thy Will Be Done.

A little rant

+JMJ

So... on October 12th Fr. Robert Barron came and gave a great lecture at my uber liberal UCC College. He was talking about the life of John Henry Cardinal Newman and also a bit on the liberal conservative divide there is in the Church today. I recorded the entire thing (over an hour) and I would share with you if I could somehow get it hosted some place, but I am not that web savy. Afterwards, we had an ice cream social that got into some deep discussion. I also found out that I think there is only two Catholics on campus that think that homosexual relations and gay marriage are wrong. I am pretty sure I one of them.

So, a few weeks ago, I was at Mass with my mother and sister and I hadn't been to Mass last Sunday and I knew I could not recieve. My mother was quite mad at me afterwards and gave me that glare and said she wanted to talk to me afterwards. I hadn't done anything wrong (well, at least any worse) and when I explaind that I could not recieve because I was in mortal sin and hadn't confessed, she told me that I take this all too seriously! Recieving the Blessed Sacrament is not a right in any way... it is a gift, and one that we must prepare ourselves to receive always! I wish that we could educate everyone to realize this.

I've also come to realize that I have slowly been secularizing myself and letting myself slip into a bit of lethargy in keeping watch. I have learned that I have been way to loose with my money and now I have to pay about $2,000 for car repairs (my car started smoking as I was driving home this past weekend) plus I owe my mom $165 for towing my car to be fixed. I have maybe just over $2,000 right now, both in savings and in checking. I'm poor... :(

Well, that is about all I have to rant/share with you today. May God bless you all abundantly!

Lord, Thy Will Be Done!

So, I was thinking...

+JMJ

Praised be Jesus Christ! Greetings to you all and your holy angels! I realize it has been far too long since I have made any sort of update and a lot has happened, although nothing major or fantastic. Monday I spent all day Downtown at the Field Musuem taking pictures for my Non-European art history class. My dad also got us tickets to see the King Tut exhibit while we where there. It really wasn't as good as I imagined it would have been. There was some really beautiful things there, but for some reason all this gold and artisian work really doesn't astound me. Even the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel didn't take my breath away. Yes, it was beautiful. What I found even more beautiful was the Crucifix on the altar. It was nothing extraordinary and possibly made by someone we don't know. I loved it and I wanted to get closer to it to see each and every detail. I love the wonderfully ornate and beautiful churches that are not tourist destinations. I was in awe of the beauty of St. Peter's, but I fell in love with the quiet sanctity of St. Paul's Outside the Walls. Am I crazy? Does the environment of art really change it's beauty?

Some new clothes...

+JMJ

Well, here is the new layout. I am still thinking about a black and blue one though. I am hoping to do some more tweaking as I go along, but this is about it for now! I am also working on some more stuff for the side bars, although I don't think it will be too hard to come up with. Suggestions are always welcome. And, yes, I know that some of the old posts look funny due to the format change.
Pax Christi!

Lord, Thy Will Be Done!

This is the beginning of the new

I am totally working on trying to re-vamp and redesign my blog... I have started with scrapping the previous black and blue and I am working on a more grey-er one... I am currently in transition as I have reverted to a blogger template for the time being. I am working with a loverly little code generator because I have very minimal html-ing skills. So, when it does come, I hope it is enjoyable. God bless you all abundantly!

Lord, Thy Will Be Done!

..::Blessed Be God::..

+JMJ

Praised be Jesus Christ! Greetings to you and your holy angels! I hope all is well with anyone who still may be reading this. I have taken a bit of a hiatus since I began working at Sears in mid June. I have spent much time on the internet since than, but not on blogs or anything of the likes. I did meander onto MySpace, but apparently, I have been kicked off. No big loss to me.

I made a visit to the Poor Clares on Wednesday this week and got to meet the new Postulant. I felt a little strange and I felt very very young. Sometimes I wish that I was not so shy with people, especially when first meeting them. There were two priests visiting from Kansas to see the postulant because she transfered from an active community out there (I think).

That is all. May God bless you all abundantly! Have a most blessed day!

Lord, Thy Will Be Done!

..::Praised Be Jesus Christ::..

+JMJ

Praised be Jesus Christ! Greetings to you and your holy angels! Today, well, yesterday in the mail I got a brochure about a Passionist 'Come and See' retreat and I wanted to share some details that were sent to me.

From the Brochure:

Hi! My name is Sister John Mary and I want to invite single Catholic women ages 16-35 to learn more about this awesome way of life-being a Passionist Nun! This is an opportunity for you to grow in your relationship with Christ, learn more about religious life and meet other young women who are on the same journey as you.

We are hosting the Consecrated Life Retreat in response to the request of Pope John Paul the Great that all religious communties make know the great joy and value of a life consecrated to Christ.

During the weekend we will share with you some tip of how to discern God's plan for your life. We will also share about our Passionist charism, the joy of living a life of worship and intercession and the liberation that comes from living the Gospel radically.

Some of the Sisters will share their vocation stories and there will be opportunities to speak privately with a Sister. We will take time for silence and prayer, laughter and hiking and even a tour inside the monastery. Where else can you find a weekend like this for only ten bucks?

When is the Retreat?

July 21-23, 2006
Arrival: Friday at 4:30 pm
Departure: Sunday at 3:00 pm
Can't make this date? Please contact me for other opportunities.

Pre-Registration

Prior to registering for this retreat please email or call and ask to speak to Sister John Mary. The quicker you contact me the easier you make our job!

Space is limitied.

Registration deadline: July 14th, 2006
Registration fee: $10.00

Under 18?

Please contact me in plenty of time that I can sen your parents/guardian the forms which need to be completed.

Where will the retreat be held?

The retreat will be in our retreat house on our grounds. We are located in a rural area 12 miles SE of Owensboro just norht of Whitesville, KY.

Benedict XVI to young People

"...I say to you, dear young people: Do not be afraid of Christ! He takes nothing away, and He gives you everything. When we give ourselves to Him, we recieve a hundredfold in return. Yes, open, open wide the doors to Christ-and you will find true life. Amen."

Visit our Monastery website and find out more about this joy-filled life lived in the heart of the Church:
www.passionistnuns.org

Who are the Passionist Nuns?

We are contemplative nuns who seek to keep alive in the hearts of people the memory of the greatest act of love in the history of the world-the saving death of Jesus, from whom alone our world will find peace and salvation.

We are deputed by the Church offer the "sacrafice of praise" continually; this is expressed most powerfully in our participation in the Holy Mass. We pray the full Liturgy of the Hours which extends praise and petition of the Mass throughout the day. We have Eucharistic adoration and at least two hours of private prayer daily.

Our Lady of Sorrows aids us in our monastic journey which also includes study, work and recreation. Our formation program, steeped in Sacred Scripture and the mystics, nourishes both heart and mind. We enjoy two periods of daily recreation-chatting, going for walks, playing games, and even riding a bike (yes, it can be done in a full religious habit!)

We love being brides of Christ and daughters of the Catholic Church!

What one young woman said about a Consecrated Life Retreat

"First and forwmost, I want to thnak you for the wonderful weekend, I very much enjoyed it.Of course I was nervous in the beginning, but the moment I arrived I felt right at home...

Hearing the talks this weekend has really given me a great appreciation of those who choose religious life as a vocation... My impression of religious life before was that it was a lonely life and I wondered why in the world somebody would do that, but now I realize that I myself wouldn't mind the life...

I wish the weekend wouldn't have ended so soon. It felt like I was only there a blink of an eye, but the time spent in that shortness I loved. I have always felt my heart 'tugging' to maybe consider religious life...

I hope to return to the Passionist Monastery sometime soon! God Bless..."

Sr. John Mary, C.P.
sjohnm@passionistnuns.org
(270) 233-4571
Passionist Nuns
8564 Crisp Road
Whitesville, KY 42378

They also included a vocation prayer with the brochure and letter. I'd like to share this as well:

O loving Jesus, you promised that once you were lifted up, you would draw all things to yourself. Through the mighty power of the Holy Spirit, draw to yourself the hearts of all whom you are calling to be a brother, sister, or priest. If you are giving me this gift help me to respond generously.

O loving Jesus, I long to gaze upon you, Reveal to me the beauty of your love in you sacred Passion. Enlighten my mind to see the passing nature of all earthly things. Make me thirst after you, who alone can satisfy the deepest longings of my heart.

O loving Jesus, Spouse of Souls, let me hear your voice calling my name, Give me a realization of the urgent and grave needs of our times, so that I may generously leave all things in order to follow you.

O loving Jesus, I ask all this for the glory of your holy Name and to obtain an abundance of your mercy for souls. I commit myself entirely to you holy will. Amen.

Lord, Thy Will Be Done!

..::Blessed Be God::..

+JMJ

Praised Be Jesus Christ! Greetings to you and your holy angels. Today I bring a bit of a meditation from awhile ago...

Nature becomes so much more beautiful when we contemplate the Maker of each and everyone of those leaves and twigs, down to the water droplets that clouds are made of. You really feel extremely loved to be blessed with such stunning and heavenly gifts as these! And you can only imagine how much more love and care was put into the creation of mankind, made in His image.

Lord, Thy Will Be Done!

..::Praised Be Jesus Christ::..

+JMJ
Praised be Jesus Christ! Greetings to you and your holy angels! It seems that pictures have invaded my posts! I guess that does make things interesting at least! I am posting again to share with you some pictures of a friend of mine that entered the PCPA's in Portsmouth, OH at St. Joseph Monastery on Divine Mercy Sunday. They are all beautiful pictures and Sister Denise is absolutly wonderful! You can visit them at www.stjosephmonastery.com, but remember, it doesn't work on firefox for some reason!

Also, these dear Sisters have a 'wish list' still. If you can assist them in anyway, please contact them via the information listed here.
This is what they need as of now:

† We were given 35 solid wood chairs and they need to be refinished & repaired. Any suggestions on how to accomplished this?

† Help with distributing brochures

† Ornate Chalices, Ciborium's

† Beautiful Vestment in honor of St. Joseph † Beautiful Vestment in honor of Our Lady

† Benefactors - to help with the building of our New Monastery

As of now, this is all the help they have received! Blessed be God!

† Riding Lawn mower

† 2 sets of Bunk beds

† Religious Books

† Printer

† Phone Cards

† Lunette

† Extra large Crock Pot

† Loaf pans for baking bread

† 2 Garden Hoes & 1 Shovel

† Computer

Please help if you can! They will remember you in their prayers!

Entrance Ceremony of Denise McClain

" Dear daughter, what do you seek?"

- - -

" Dear Rev. Mother, I beg most humbly for

the love of God, to be admitted into this Community,

so that I may more securely work out the salvation

of my soul, by dedicating myself to the

Perpetual Adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament

in the order of our Seraphic Father, Saint Francis,

and our holy Mother Saint Clare."

I wish this picture of their cat would show up on my blog, but I am having technical difficulties! Maybe you can see it if you click here. Yay for Nuns and kitties! This may be my favorite combo EVER!