Category Archives: Saint Days and Liturgical Feasts

Advent Week Two: A Time for Reconciliation, A Time for Forgiveness, Part II

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Yesterday, our Advent post introduced us to seven of the most common misconceptions regarding forgiveness. It presented to us that forgiveness does not mean that we condone the hurtful behavior nor does it mean that our pain doesn’t matter. It doesn’t mean that once we extend it, everything is magically “okay” and it doesn’t mean that we allow ill will toward us to continue. It doesn’t mean that we stay in an abusive or harmful situation nor does it mean that a just resolution to our situation is unnecessary. And, it does not mean that we feel forgiveness. Read the rest…

Advent Week Two: A Time for Reconciliation, A Time for Forgiveness, Part I

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“For God so loved the world that He gave His Only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

The whole purpose of Christmas is reconciliation. Through the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, His passion, death, and resurrection, God’s mercy flowed into the world, the breach of original sin was mended, and fellowship between God and man was restored. Each Christmas commemorates again this wondrous gift of reconciliation and love. Read the rest…

Advent Week One: A Time of Preparation, A Time of Prayer, Part IV

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I have often been amazed at how God answers a particular question, responds to a petition, or gives me guidance on a specific issue through Sacred Scripture. The reality of this points to a great truth — God is always seeking to reveal Himself and His will to us. In fact, one spiritual writer tells us that God already had us in mind when He inspired the evangelists in their writings. Consider this as you pray the Scriptures using Lectio-Divina. Read the rest…

Advent Week One: A Time of Preparation, A Time of Prayer, Part III

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Hopefully, your experience of praying Holy Scripture using the Lectio-Divina form of prayer was a good one. However, it can take a bit of perseverance if this is new to you. Do not be discouraged, but continue to call upon the assistance of the Holy Spirit. Read the rest…

Advent Week One: A Time of Preparation, A Time of Prayer, Part I

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The following blog is being reposted from the teaching series that I gave previously.  I hope that you enjoy it!

Great events are marked by great preparation. A wedding, the coming of a new baby, graduations, special anniversaries, significant birthdays, and celebrations of all sorts are often months in the planning. Read the rest…

Women of Grace: St. Teresa of Avila (1515 – 1582)

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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. Read the rest…

The “Monica” Method: How to Evangelize Your Loved One

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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.

Read the rest…

A Four Point Plan to Make a Good Lent

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I’m re-posting this blog which was written several years ago.  It contains a four point plan to help you make this a good Lent and some wisdom from my granddaughter Julia.  At the bottom, I’ve shared the podcast from yesterday’s Women of Grace Live radio program as well as my Lenten themed e-book.  During the program we talked about this blog and had a lively, thought-provoking discussion about it.  Please read, listen and share.

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.” Read the rest…

Saint Jacinta Marto-100th Anniversary Celebration

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by Thea Parsons
We are celebrating the life of Saint Jacinta Marto, a young Saint with more humility and heroic virtue than many of us reading this email! Without question, she accepted the call of God through Our Blessed Mother to suffer…to suffer for the conversion of sinners! To pray for those who have no one to pray for them, the lowly. How blessed are we by this young Saint?! By her courage?! May she intercede on our behalf, that we may exercise the same obedience she did with her brother and cousin, that we may be as courageous and steadfast in our, ‘yes,’ when we are called, and in our prayer, and suffering!

Read the rest…

Mary Visits Her Children: Our Lady of Lourdes

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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.” Read the rest…