I would like to ask for prayers for the lovely chap I am sharing my hospital room with.
He’s 25, and has lost his mother three years ago due to an illness. This even has greatly marked his life and strengthened his difficulty in dealing with God and even entering a church.
He is a good guy and I see how much his whole family has, and is, suffering on many different levels. I see his heart has space for God, but needs education and confidence in His love.
Please help me pray much for him and for his spiritual and emotional healing.
Jesus, I trust in You!
My name's Paul, a Catholic teen who's discerning the priesthood and religious life, and I trust that God will make me into a great saint! :)
Prayer Request
The Advent Wreath
On the first day of Advent, Catholic families will set up Advent wreath - a wreath of greenery adorned by a set of four candles – typically, three violet-colored, and one rose-colored to match the priest’s vestments on each of the days the candles are lit. The wreath is either set upon a table (especially the dining room table), on the family altar, on pedestals, an end table, etc., or it can by suspended by ribbons from the ceiling, such as from a light fixture. The candles can be long, slim tapers, small votives, or fat pillars. There can be pinecones and such adorning the greenery, but because Advent is a penitential season, it shouldn’t be highly decorated with colorful ornaments.
The circular shape of the wreath is a symbol of eternity, and the greenery symbolizes hope and renewal. The colors of the typically-used violet and rose candles symbolize penance and joy, respectively.
Each candle also represents one of the four weeks of Advent, and one thousand years of the four thousand years that (at least metaphorically) passed between Adam and Eve to Christ’s coming.
The first candle also recalls the Patriarchs; the second candle recalls the Prophets; the third candle recalls St. John the Baptist; and the final candle recalls Our Lady.
If colored candles are used, the violet candles are lit on the first, second, and fourth Sundays of Advent, and the rose candle is lit on the third Sunday (“Gaudete Sunday,” when the priest also wears rose vestments at Mass), a day of rejoicing because the faithful have arrived at the midpoint of Advent and anticipate Christmas. In any case, whether colored or white candles are used, one more candle is lit each week at dinnertime, the progressive lighting of the candles symbolizing the expectation and hope surrounding our Lord’s first coming into the world and the anticipation of His second coming to judge the living and the dead. The candles are kept burning throughout the Sunday supper, and then are immediately blown out afterward (candles can be replaced and greenery freshened as needed).
At midnight on Christmas Eve, the Advent wreath is replaced by a white “Christ candle” that is suitably adorned with holly, or by being carved with symbols of Christ, etc. This Christ Candle is used until the Ephiphany or Candlemas, depending on the family’s particular Christmas customs. The greenery of the Advent wreath can now be decorated and turned into a Christmas wreath for use throughout the Christmas season.
“Some people are so foolish that they think they can go through life without the help of the Blessed Mother. Love the Madonna and pray the rosary, for her Rosary is the weapon against the evils of the world today. All graces given by God pass through the Blessed Mother.” -St. Padre Pio
#CatholicConnect
How Mother Teresa Challenged Hillary Clinton on Abortion»
“With her canonization, Catholics might look to Mother Teresa now for some formal intercession, as Mrs. Clinton’s trajectory increasingly foreshadows a dark future for the unborn and for religious liberty in America.”
“Two very different women on the minds of Roman Catholics right now are Mother Teresa, with her canonization on Sept. 4, and Hillary Clinton, with her name on the presidential ballot in November. Hillary stands as the most influential woman in America. Someone who might have foreseen such prominence for Hillary was Mother Teresa. Perhaps that’s why the bold nun from Kolkata, India, persistently challenged the then-first lady’s push to make abortion more widely available.
… Peggy Noonan, the former Reagan speechwriter and a pro-life Catholic, was there. She says that by this point in the talk, attendees began shifting in their seats, as a lot of what the holy lady from Kolkata had to say was striking too close to home.
Then the sister said something that made everyone very uncomfortable: “But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because Jesus said, ‘If you receive a little child, you receive me.’ So every abortion is the denial of receiving Jesus, the neglect of receiving Jesus.”
Here, Noonan described a “cool deep silence” that enveloped the room, but only for a brief moment, and then applause started on the right side of the room and then spread throughout the crowd, as people began clapping and standing; the ballroom was swept up in nonstop applause, which Noonan says lasted five to six minutes.
Yet some did not clap at all. Hillary Clinton did not, and neither did her husband; nor did Vice President Al Gore and Tipper Gore. They sat there, in the glare of the hot lights, all eyes in the crowd fixed upon them, as they tried not to move or be noticed, conspicuous in their lack of response, clearly uncomfortable as the applause raged on.
The tiny, weak, aged lady was only warming up. She had seen and experienced real suffering and couldn’t care less about making momentarily uncomfortable a crowd of a few thousand financially comfortable people who had never known real material deprivation and whose only crisis each morning was traffic or a long line at Starbucks.
She returned to that selfishness point:
“By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. [Abortion is] really a war against the child, and I hate the killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that the mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? … Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love one another, but to use violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.”
…Well, tragically, Hillary Clinton has become far more fanatical for “abortion rights” (and for redefining marriage and the ever-expanding “LGBTQ” agenda) — and at the expense of religious liberty — than Mother Teresa could have foreseen. Or maybe she did foresee it. Maybe the little nun saw it coming. Maybe she perceived that Hillary Clinton was poised to one day have an even greater impact. Perhaps something spoke to her. And perhaps a sign of her genuine saintliness was her vigorous attempt to reach out to Hillary Clinton and try to salvage, if not improve, the road ahead.
With her canonization, Catholics might look to Mother Teresa now for some formal intercession, as Mrs. Clinton’s trajectory increasingly foreshadows a dark future for the unborn and for religious liberty in America.”
“A saint isn’t somebody who tries harder
but somebody who trusts more.”Trying implies that we can do it, that sanctity comes from our making.
Trusting implies that it comes from God, that we can’t do it.
- Peter Kreeft, Prayer: The Great Conversation
I keep pronouncing this in Latin, it doesn’t sound right in English anymore. Haha, Oh Catholic Problems.