|
Purify Me, O My Jesus, Strengthen Me! Dear Apostles of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Our participation in the great Militia of the Immaculata during this most trying time in the course of history is the greatest privilege, most singular blessing and incredibly sobering responsibility. We are engaged in a battle with the powers of Hell and it is a fight to the death. In order to obtain victory for Our Queen, we must be generous, courageous and heroic in our efforts and we must keep in top spiritual fitness. The sacred fountain of the Sacrament of Penance pours out upon souls the Precious Blood of Jesus that we may be purified from all stain of sin and find the sweet peace of divine strength and a new ardor to go forward on the path of intimacy with Christ.
We must ask God to help us make a good Confession. The grace of this Sacrament obtains for us that absolute purity and delicacy of conscience so essential to our intimate union with Him. It is here that we consider those things which separate us from the Love of God: disobedience, detraction, resentment, contempt for others and harsh judgment of them.
“Go in peace, my son, and sin no more!” United with Mary, let us go forward and love, for Love Alone Matters!
Please pray for me as I will pray for you all the days of my life! |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Glory be to Jesus Christ! Dear Benefactors and Members of the ULRA,
Jesus Christ carried for us the Holy Cross and offered His Life for our salvation. May He protect you, give you peace of soul, full harmony of life, and may He preserve you from all dangers, physical and spiritual! We ask the Virgin Mary, Our Heavenly Queen, who is standing near the Cross of her Son, Jesus Christ, to help you overcome all sorrows, grief and tribulations and to shield you from all dangers. During the Holy Season of Lent, I and many other priests of Ukraine will be celebrating additional Masses for you and your families, and your special intentions. Your personal commitment to the Living Rosary is an incredible help to us here and has allowed this beautiful work to spread faith, consolation and spiritual strength to all our members. Your assistance means so very much to us! I will keep you, your most beloved family, and your health and intentions daily in my Holy Masses. I will remember every day your departed relatives. I wish you a very Holy and Joyful Feast of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and blessings upon your labours, your family and your work every moment of your daily life. Really, your special intentions and needs are very dear to my heart! May God reward you abundantly! Fr. Ivan Kolodiy
Dear Patti, We solely regard the Living Rosary as the mother of the Sudan! This is what is on the lips of everyone here. You must wonder why I was silent for over a week! By the time I come to town from deep down in the villages, I find everything in chaos! I am proclaiming, with humble force, the ULRA’s centre piece – the DECADE! Our Mission has, this time, been critical when the faithful are more in dire need than ever before! From the depth of my heart, I thank you for your constant communication with me since I arrived here! Your precious encouragements have seen me through with successes during these trying times! The needs of this great missionary nation have been enormous and still remain so! You have been at my side and fully participated the most, with the indispensable contributions of Mother Mary’s message toward bringing peace to a population currently distressed with uncertainty and fear of the coming Elections’ threat of war!
This time, dear Patti, I do consent fully that I have demanded a lot! This is because the forthcoming Elections have precipitated a call for preventive measures! As you know, prevention is better than cure! When we dress these poor souls, we are shielding them with Our Blessed Mother’s protection! I am so overwhelmed by your responses; however, let me put it to you. I will go home unsettled for the people of Abyei (El Obeid diocese) and for Danga Severio in Dungu diocese who are in such great need and counting on our help. Abyei is a vast area at the north/south border. Last year, 2000 people were killed in exchange of fire between Moslems in the north and Christians in the south! Then, we sent some Sacramentals to the nuns and found it effective! It is stipulated that this will be the nucleus of the next round of fighting! You remember David who played a role in my coming to Sudan in 2003 when he was still a passive rebel in Uganda; he is currently based in Abyei, serving with an active north/south joint force that oversee no outbreak of war till the Referendum next year! He has told me that he will, by all means, send the oils and MM to those people who are dying like insects. He even phoned me last evening asking when we would deliver! He also told me that there is evidence that the few who have the MM and used the holy oil have healed wounds and chemical gun smoke that are affecting and blinding a large population is under control! What can we do! I have to sympathize with you surely, you are drained now!
If you say a big YES, I will go to Malakal and teach them the ULRA devotion and then leave to meet George! I am trying to do whatever I can while I am still here. The coming days are dark. People in Abyei and Dungu are crying for our help! God bless you abundantly, Mother of the Sudanese! FATIMA and THE MORNING OFFERING The Morning Offering – Our Most Important Act of the Day!
The Magdalens will come to adore Him in the Blessed Sacrament, but not before they have met Him in the streets. They must encounter the goodness of Him in the members of His Mystical Body. Every Christian has a missionary vocation. We are like the Mother of God, really. Our apostolic mission is to give Christ to the world. Our Lord complains to Margaret Mary, “Behold, this Heart which has so loved men, which has spared nothing, even to being exhausted and consumed, yet the greater part of men make me no return other than their ingratitude, coldness and forgetfulness. But, what is still more painful is those who are consecrated to Me treat Me thus.” Spontaneous and whole-hearted consecration is the flower of real love. For the moment, we may not be called upon to pour forth our sweat and blood on the battlefields of apostleship, but we can PRAY! Our prayers, penances and good works are a power. Our prayerful army of penitent souls whose supplications and sacrifices daily ascend to God is a great strength to the Mystical Body of Christ. Before God, prayer is more powerful than an arm of steel. The salvation of another man’s soul may depend upon me. God gave to every man the command of loving his neighbor. On Golgotha, Christ looked down on His little flock, composed of the 3 Mary’s and St. John. Please God, give me the courage to keep vigil with them at the foot of the Cross. Sanctifying Grace lifts man into the world of grace where the good he does and the evil he avoids, becomes infinitely meritorious. By prayer we become, with Christ, the co-saviors of our brothers, helping God in the great work of Redemption without ever taking from Him one mite of glory. Prayer is a kind of priesthood without its responsibility. Through prayer, there is no limit to the number of souls we can reach. We cannot say one prayer for someone in need without receiving from the Hand of God a shower of graces for ourselves. Prayer is all embracing! It puts its arms around the whole world and draws all men closer to God. Everyone who asks receives! Beneath the Cross, the Mother of God did what you do in the Morning Offering: She gave to God all that she had for the salvation of souls. Every sacrifice is an act of adoration and reparation. While the ritual of prayer is not the sacrifice, the offering of it is. In our prayer of adoration, we admit our dependence on God and God’s absolute rights over us. In the Morning Offering, we give our life over to God through the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Sin is the assertion of our independence of God which directly contradicts Every sin is a denial of adoration of God. Through the Morning Offering, we give to God the Lamb who was slain on the Cross. It is an act of adoration and contrition. Uniting our prayers, works, joys and sufferings with all the Holy Masses being offered in the whole world and all those participating in them, is a powerful act of adoration, reparation and love. Because of the living union we enjoy with one another and with Christ, we are able to do by the omnipotence of prayer some of the things which God does on the strength of His perfection. The wounded Heart of Mary at the foot of the Cross beckons all who look at her to ponder the focus of her love, and its complete devotedness to the Heart of God. It does not say, Love Me; it says, Love Him! Mary and the Son of God surrender themselves to one another completely. By His Passion, the Word of God, made man, fathered the new mankind. By her compassion, by her close physical and spiritual union with the Crucified, Mary, as Mother, brought forth the new mankind. Mary is the Mediatrix of all Graces. Christ is the Head of the Mystical Body; Mary is its Heart!
What does Our Lady ask all those consecrated to Her Immaculate Heart to do? Daily make the Morning Offering, pray the Rosary, confess and receive Holy Communion on First Saturday in reparation, and offer up the sacrifice of Daily Duty for the salvation of poor sinners. The Mystical Body needs health to grow and defend itself. We speed the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth by devoting ourselves to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Mother and Son have always carried on the labor of Redemption together. Each morning, dedicate your day to Jesus through Mary. Make faithfully and fervently your Morning Offering. We cannot separate the apostleship of prayer from the apostleship of suffering for, by it, we offer to God our prayers, works and sufferings through the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Our physical sufferings are nothing compared to the sufferings of our soul. Stand on any street comer, and look at the many sad faces, furrowed by worry and fear, masking the dark labyrinths of the mind where the soul wrestles with anxiety, loneliness, hurt, ingratitude and sorrow. When the Messiah came to us, He came as the Man of Sorrows. Because we are incorporated in Christ, none of man’s problems can be solved on the basis of individualism. No man is a being unto himself. He is everlastingly a part of the Body of Christ, who was the priest of His own sacrifice. Through suffering, we will have in our own body a Relic of the True Cross! The passion was everything that Divine Justice would demand from a sinful world as the price of those heavenly graces which would flood it and wash it clean. The work of pain is finished for Christ the Head. But His members still must suffer. The more we detest sin, the greater will be our efforts to destroy it – the better will be our prayer! “To know Christ more intimately, to love Him more ardently, and to follow Him more closely!” This is the mission of the Church and each one of us who love Jesus has an intimate part in it. Never fail to plunge into the Ocean of Grace offered to us, each day, through the Morning Offering. In doing this, we will with one voice, one heart and one soul, greatly hasten the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
O MY GOD, in union with the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer Thee the Precious Blood of Jesus from all the Altars throughout the world, joining with It the offering of my every thought, word and action of this day. I desire to gain every indulgence and merit I can, offering them, together with myself, to Mary Immaculate whom Thou hast appointed the dispenser of the merits of Thy Precious Blood, especially by means of this Scapular (here kiss your Brown Scapular) that She may best apply them to the interests of Thy Most Sacred Heart. Amen. One OUR FATHER, HAIL MARY and GLORY BE Sweet Heart of Mary, Be My Salvation! |
Through the embracing arms of God’s mercy, we are lifted up to merit salvation by the power of His Most Precious Blood. Our hearts are softened, bad habits weakened, dispositions changed, new habits are infused and entanglements are untied. How powerful to restore peace to the troubled soul is the Sacrament of Penance!
In this special season of Holy Lent when the Catholic Church is reflecting on the suffering of Christ and His Redemption of mankind, I am writing to inform you that I have celebrated the Sacred Masses for your intentions, your health, protection from every evil, courage and perseverance in our Holy Faith. May God’s blessing be upon you!
I assure you, you have done your part; rest assured all that you have sent has been put to proper use! I will not be able to present your gorgeous gifts to the administrator of the diocese of Malakal because he has gone to Rome with other Sudanese bishops for the Ad Lamina! The Pope will have audience with them 11th April. You have equipped tens of thousands with the priceless protection shield of the Miraculous Medal and given hope to a population, ravaged by war. From April, we are to see chaos that will climax during January next year when a Referendum will decide whether the south will secede from the northern Islamists! Determination for this is underway but the poor Christian souls are the ones to bear the brunt!
I do accept, in principle, to go to Malakal, I will do it during the last week of my stay! I plan to even utilize that week of grace from 11th to 18th March when I will be in Malakal!
Then, Severio in N.E. DR Congo is also crying; these are the people who were battered by Kony rebels on Christmas day in 2008! We happened to send him two boxes in January 2009! He now expects more from us! I am ashamed; he wrote me a note in poor English telling me that all their eyes are looking at us for possible arrival of more help!
God has only one intention. He desires the salvation of all men. Through knowing Christ, man will come to know and love the Father. The modern world has a bitter need to see Christ in the streets. I am talking about the presence of Christ in Christians.
On the occasion of the Jubilee at Fatima, Pius XII consecrated the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. On December 8, he solemnly renewed the consecration in the Basilica of St. Peter, at Rome. The consecration is the prayer of the Pope to Mary Immaculate. In it, he asks that our Mother grant to us many things. He does not ask for them as an outright gift, something she might obtain for us with no effort on our part, as one might ask for a miracle. NO! The prayer is a dedication, a consecration! The peace for which the Father of Christendom asks is the victory to which the Vicar of Christ will lead his people after they have fought for it and merited the grace of it. The consecration is the knight’s vigil on the eve of battle. He comes to Mary’s altar because the morrow’s battle will be in her honor and for the Kingdom of her Son. The Son through the Mother, the Mediatrix of All Graces, will give strength to the warrior’s right arm. But the man will wield the sword, not some angel. When there are enough right arms, strong in grace, the Mystical Body will be an irresistible fighting unit, spiritually armed and operating as one, able to overcome all those forces in the world that the devil can muster against it.
Tags: Association, Catholic, Filomena, Living, Philomena, Philomene, Rosary, Saint, Santa, Universal