Dear Friend,

I am excited to share something that just happened while preparing this email. The Holy Spirit jumped right in and showed me what to share with you.

Not long ago I ran across comments about fasting made by Vicka, one of the Medjugorje visionaries. Since the world is celebrating the 40th anniversary of Our Lady's apparitions there, and fasting has been a central message stemming from this holy place, I thought this to be a good time.

When I reread Vicka's words, I was pleasantly surprised that they reiterated the discussion we had earlier with Mr. Kevin McCarthy, our special guest for the first day of the Holy Hour Novena for Our Nation, about the importance of and need for purity.

Kevin spoke about Our Lady of America's promise that the United States would be granted the gift of purity if her wishes were fulfilled by the bishops and what a tremendous impact that would have on our lives, and indeed, the entire world.

Saint Joseph and his gift of purity were not overlooked and all agreed to call upon our spiritual father more often for husbands and fathers. It was a profound time of sharing and reflection.

So, since we are celebrating the birth of the United States of America, and since the consistent theme has been the need for purity, I thought I would utilize a picture of Our Lady of America for this email.

We have thousands of pictures stored in many different files in all kinds of categories so getting a picture is not as easy as it sounds. In fact, I usually call Dave to have him find what I am looking for, but this time I just dove in, clicked on a file, and this is the one that opened!