May God bless you abundantly this Lent.
This morning, my somewhat precocious six year old granddaughter and I had a conversation over breakfast:
“Grandma,” she said gazing out of the kitchen window in our Florida home.
“Yes, Julia?” said I.
“Pretty soon Easter will be here because it is Spring outside.”
“Yes, you are right. Ash Wednesday is this week and that begins the season of Lent.”
Perhaps no other appearance of the Blessed Virgin Mary has captured people’s hearts and imaginations like those she made to Bernadette Soubirous in Lourdes, France in 1858. Our Lady appeared eighteen times that year to an impoverished, uneducated fourteen-year-old girl who lived with her family in an old jail. Since that time, more than five thousand healings are reported to have taken place in the spot where the Blessed Mother appeared; sixty-four of them the Catholic Church has proclaimed “miraculous.”
Woman of Grace: St. Scholastica (480 – 543)
St. Gregory the Great recounts this story from the life of St. Benedict’s beloved twin sister, St. Scholastica, which shows how expressing our petitions to God with childlike faith and confidence sometimes yields immediate and amazing results.
After Benedict founded a monastery for men, Scholastica remained very close to her brother, founding a convent for women some miles away. Every year Scholastica went to visit Benedict at a little place just outside the monastery gate.
“This is the way to become a new creation in Christ Jesus. The old way of being will pass away and we will be made new in Him."
-2 Cor. 5:17-18
March 2020
Here at Women of Grace we are busy preparing for our upcoming events, additional webinars on insightful and inspiring topics, and a host of other outreaches to help us live our call as Catholics in the world today, none of which would be possible without your prayers and financial support. Please visit our website (womenofgrace.com) to find out all about our upcoming events, including our annual Women of Grace Retreat at Malvern Retreat House in July.It’s hard to believe we are already closing in on the halfway mark of Lent. How would you evaluate your Lent thus far? It’s a good question to ask at the mid-way point. It’s never too late to adjust, begin again, or even start over should you need to.
Life being what it is, I have often found it beneficial to come up with a plan and a strategy to help me enter more deeply into the Lenten season. In years past, I have planned and strategized how to “give up” certain foods or treats (don’t buy them), activities and recreations (don’t go to them), habits and behaviors (don’t do them). One year I even gave up going to the mall (don’t drive by it). That was my longest Lent ever!
Along with the exclusions, I have often added a few inclusions: more time in prayer and study, going to adoration more frequently and performing additional acts of charity.
This year, I have devised a new plan centered around behaviors that start with “C,” as in Cross. Together, they are acting as a compass leading me through this holy season. The goal has been to implement some and eliminate others. I’ll leave it to you to figure out which is which!
Here are a few:
» Complain
» Collaborate
» Console
» Control
» Complete
» Carp
» Conciliate
» Carry On
In the end, the purpose is to advance in becoming what the cross is all about – LOVE. Recall that it was because of His love for us that God gave us His Son, and it was out of the Son’s love for us that the Son chose the Cross. Two passages from Scripture tell us as much: For God so loved the world that He gave His Only-Begotten Son, that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but have everlasting life John 3:16), and There is no greater love than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends (John 15:13).
As Christians, we are called to live Christ, to be His presence in the world, to be His love among men in all of the diverse circumstances, situations, and nuances of our daily lives. Jesus tells us:
This is my commandment: love one another love as I have loved you (John 15:12). And this, It was not you who chose me, it was I who chose you to go forth and bear fruit. Your fruit must endure… The command I give is this, that you love one another (John 15:16,17).
Both remind me of yet another passage. Given to us through St. Paul, this one shows us the way to love: Love is patient, love is kind. Love is not jealous, it does not put on airs, it is not snobbish. Love is never rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not prone to anger; neither does it brood over injuries. Love does not rejoice in what is wrong but rejoices in the truth. There is no limit to love’s forbearance, to its trust, its hope, its power to endure … Love never fails … There are in the end three things that last: faith, hope, and love, and the greatest of these is love (1 Cor. 13: 4-7, 8, 13). This is the way to become a new creation in Christ Jesus. The old way of being will pass away and we will be made new in Him (2 Cor. 5:17-18).
Lent is 40 days long. Researchers tell us it takes about six weeks to engage a new behavior. My hope is that implementation of my “C” words will help me overcome vices, grow in virtue, and better become Christ’s love in the world today.
It’s been a lofty goal to be sure, but why not think big for the Lord? We can never arrive at our destination if we never set off.
Let’s sojourn together through this holy time no matter or plan or strategy. Together we can do great things through the Lord!
As always, I faithfully remain...
Today we celebrate the beautiful Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. It's a special day for Women of Grace® because we are entrusted to her patronage and protection.
St. Teresa of Avila shows us it is never too late to get serious about our prayer life. Born Dona Teresa Sanchez Cepeda Davila y Ahumada, Teresa was an active child with a big imagination and great sensitivity of heart. Little Teresa and her brother Roderigo were intrigued by the lives of the saints and the martyrs, and often sought to imitate their holy example.
The next two days mark the feasts of two great saints of the Church, a mother and a son, whose lives give testimony to a sure-fire method of evangelizing those we love.St. Monica (August 27) is the mother of St. Augustine (August 28), though Augustine was no saint when Monica began her earnest intercession. At that time he was a pagan and a member of the heretical Manichean sect. He was known to be a carouser who lived with a woman to whom he had fathered a child. A brilliant mind, he was "devoted" to his views and his lifestyle, and had no intention of converting to the Catholic faith.
St. Monica was distraught about her son's dissolute ways and decided to do something about it. She prayed. And in the end, her prayers won the soul of her son.
What was it that made St. Monica's prayers so effective? I think five strategies are primarily responsible. Perhaps you can implement them as you seek to evangelize those you love.
St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein, 1891 – 1942)
She was a brilliant scholar, a contemplative mystic, and a “liberated” feminist. At various times she was also a devout Jew, an atheist, a philosopher, a Catholic, and a Carmelite nun. Hers was a heart that hungered for truth, with a passion that burned with such purity and clarity that Pope John Paul II, whose own Mulieris Dignitatem and “Letter to Women” bear the unmistakable imprint of her spirit, canonized her less than fifty years after her death at Auschwitz.
When Our Lady appeared outside St. John the Baptist Church in Knock, Ireland on August 21,1879, she uttered not a single word, but the way she chose to appear spoke volumes.
