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A MOTHER'S LOVE GUEST: FR. JOSEPH CAMPBELL There was a couple who was extremely generous. They had eleven children, and the dinner table often had others seated along with them. The house at any given time was a home to others in need. They were both amazing, but as the saying goes, “the heart of a home is the mother.”
Although she proclaimed motherhood beautifully, others often “encouraged” her that enough was enough, that she should look into options that would ensure no more pregnancies. But she knew that, by God's design, wife and mother meant a greater generosity than the world understands. That calling became very real when at the age of 43 she was told by her doctors that if she became pregnant again, not only would her baby face birth defects, but she herself would be at risk during the pregnancy.
She struggled to remain open and faithful to God’s will, but continued to trust in God. He doubly blessed her with another pregnancy… twins. The doctors’ concern grew. The chance of her losing one of the babies was great. If the other survived, one could only hope for the best. She herself was at risk. The doctors advised her to consider the “alternatives.”
Very anxious and disturbed, she turned to the Carmelite Sisters in Buffalo, NY. She asked them to pray for her babies. She never mentioned herself. These wonderful nuns assured her that all would be fine, and asked her if they could consecrate the babies to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which basically means to particularly entrust them to His care. She, of course, agreed.
By God’s grace she went the distance, carrying the babies to full term, giving birth to twin boys. All was well. God is faithful and can never be outdone in generosity.
One of those twins is me.
God’s Divine Providence is amazing. He has a purpose, an intention for each of us, even before we come forth from our mother’s womb. Twenty-six years after the Carmelites’ prayer, my twin brother and I were both ordained priests… on the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
Not a day goes by when I don’t thank God for my parents, who taught me the value and meaning of life, who gave great witness of invincible love.
Mom, with your tremendous talents, as Marlon Brando put it, “You could have been a contender! You could have been somebody!” But instead of being served you chose to serve. You gave us the complete gift of your self, the gift of life, the gift of love. By your fearless trust in God and selfless sacrifice you imitated Christ. You formed us to similarly embrace our vocations to imitate Christ, to reveal Him through a life of self-sacrifice and giving, a life of love.
For us you are the Contender. You are Someone. And nothing says that any better than “Mom.”
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We're very excited about Supreme Makeover: Home Edition beginning in September, leading into Sanctus: Eucharistic Family Revival. We need your help. Your prayers, your engagement, feedback, and yes... your financial partnership. Help us build. Spread the word. Pray. Become a monthly partner or share a one-time gift. Please, call us at any time to discuss any of this!
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Greg & Stephanie Schlueter
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Greg@MassImpact.us | (814) 449-8808
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| | | | LIVE IT THIS WEEK: "MYSTICAL BODY OF CHRIST"
June 19-25, 2023
A simple guide to help your family grow in holiness.
FUN QUESTION:
"Describe an amazing, new amusement park ride." (submit your fun question)
LIVE IT TIDBIT
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GOSPEL | Matthew 10:26-33
Jesus said to the Twelve:
"Fear no one.
Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed,
nor secret that will not be known.
What I say to you in the darkness, speak in the light;
what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops.
And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul;
rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy
both soul and body in Gehenna.
Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin?
Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father's knowledge.
Even all the hairs of your head are counted.
So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.
Everyone who acknowledges me before others
I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father.
But whoever denies me before others,
I will deny before my heavenly Father."
QUESTION:
What struck you in this reading? Challenged you? Inspired you? What questions did it raise?
YOU IMAGE THE TRINITY: LIVE IT
Going around, affirm how you have been blessed and/or inspired by each person this past week. Encourage him/her.
DAILY QUESTIONS:.
Everyone go around and share...
1) Something you’re grateful for?
2) A recent victory?
3) A current challenge?
4) An affirmation of someone?
5) Something meaningful happening?
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EPISODE 381: ADDELYN'S STORY with Jeff & Sue Wehner
Wehner's are a beautiful, very engaged Catholic family of seven living in Sandusky, Ohio. Add five family saints looking down from on high (miscarriages). On the eve of Valentine's Day, 2023, Addelyn (7) was perfectly healthy. The next day all her systems were shutting down. She was life-flighted. This is a beautifully moving story of how the entire Wehner family and community gave witness throughout it all. We talk about God's blessing of marriage and family, and give particular consideration to the big question: How do we understand God and faith when things don't go the way we want? Where is God in tragedy? See the video version for moving photos that highlight the journey.
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| | | PREACHING IT: "The Human Heart"
BY FR. DAVID KIDD
Fr. David Kidd delivered this stirring homily on the final day of Sacred Heart Novena at the Visitation Monastery in Toledo, Ohio.
O Most Sacred Heart of Jesus…
Have Mercy On Us.
Day 9: The Feast The Human Heart is amazing!
1. The human heart weighs between 7 and 15 ounces.
2. Newborn babies have the fastest heart beats.
3. A newborn’s heart rate is around 70 to 190 beats per minute. The average adult should have a resting heart rate between 60 and 100 beats per minute. Athletes, who regularly train, will have a very slow resting heart rate around 40 to 60 beats per minute.
4. Your heart beats around 100,000 times a day. The sound you hear when it beats is actually the noise of the heart valves opening and closing.
5. Your heart pumps 2,000 gallons of blood a day.
6. That blood travels about 12,000 miles through your body each day, which is four times the size of the U.S. from coast to coast. During your lifetime, you pump about one million barrels of blood.
7. There are 60,000 miles of blood vessels in your body.
Without your heart, you cease to exist. Without the Sacred Heart, we cease to be loved and to love.
What we celebrate today, the feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, isn’t just any feast, it's not just another devotion of the Church. It is the devotion. The gift of love from God to man. In this feast lies the entire Christian Mystery.
The Directory of Popular Piety and Liturgy states, “The term, ‘Sacred Heart of Jesus,’ denotes the entire mystery of Christ, the totality of his being, and his person…Devotion to the Sacred calls for a fundamental attitude of conversion and reparation, of love and gratitude…”
Pope Benedict XVI wrote, “The essential nucleus of Christianity is expressed in the Heart of Jesus; in Christ the whole of the revolutionary newness of the Gospel was revealed and given to us; the Love that saves us and already makes us live in God’s eternity. Even our shortcomings, our limitations, and our weaknesses must lead us back to the Heart of Jesus. His divine Heart calls to our hearts, inviting us to come out of ourselves, to abandon our human certainties, to trust in Him and follow His example, to make of ourselves a gift of love without reserve.”
Pope Pius XI stated, “Is not a summary of all our religion and moreover, a guide to a more perfect life contained in this one devotion?”
The Venerable Mother Louise Margaret Claret de la Touch, French Visitation Nun in the early 20th Century, wrote, “The Sacred Heart is not a simple devotion of sentiment; it not even a special isolated dogma - it is the synthesis of all Catholic doctrine of the whole Catholic moral law summed up in the love of Jesus Christ for us and of our love for Jesus Christ….[we] find in this charity the purpose if not the explanation of the whole series of Christian mysteries.
As one Jesuit priest directed me to this quote and shared his great love for the Sacred Heart of Jesus, this French Canadian Sister, Blessed Marie Rose Durocher, foundress of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary in the 19th Century, wrote “I invite you to go there [into the heart of Jesus] with me, for it is there that I wish to remain, and where, if you wish it so, we shall never be separated from one another” (Owens, Realizing Our Deepest Desires).
So Let Us go into the Heart of Jesus. Come with me. Just as Jesus directed Thomas the Apostle to put his finger into the side of the Risen Christ, Caravaggio’s famous painting of this Gospel scene that turns from the Apostle of unbelief to belief, he captures beautifully the shock faces of the other apostles who pear into the side of Christ with Thomas.
Let us go into the Heart of Jesus.As we console the heart of Jesus, we must stand Guard as the Guards of Honor do, as all 26,000 Guards of Honor from the Toledo Visitation Monastery do every day in their promised hour of dedicated work of their hands to repair the sins of the world and “snatch men from the brink of hell.”
So beautifully celebrated last year on the feast of the Sacred Heart with the overturning of Roe vs. Wade in our country after almost 50 years!
Let us now console the Sacred Heart today for the sins of the LA Dodgers Major League Baseball Team who think it is okay to mock religious sisters and the Sacred Heart on this feast day!
Today the bishops of the United States ask us to fight back and pray the Litany of the Sacred Heart and offer an act of reparation to repair the sins against the altar of our Lord for the abomination of the LA Dodgers.
I call our attention back to the quote from Pope Pius XI from 95 years ago: “devotion to the most sacred heart is the extraordinary remedy for the extraordinary needs of our time.”
We must enter into his Sacred Heart as the image of the Sacred Heart at the top of the high altar appears. Today we offer our Mass ad orientem, to the liturgical east, where Christ promises “to come again and judge the living and the dead and the world by fire.” And we must be ready. He gave us the Sacred Heart to repair the ills of time - for the pride, for the lust, for the over-indulgence, and for the self-worship of our time. We are reminded to turn back to God with our whole heart. To worship Him all facing the same direction. To put the focus on His Sacred Heart. We must decrease and He Must increase. His Heart - His meek and humble Heart we heard about in Matthew’s Gospel - so too must our hearts be like if we are to follow Jesus into His pierced side and into His Heart. If we are not meek and humble of heart, we won’t be able to get past the thorns that surround His Heart. If we are not meek and humble of heart, we will not get past the arrows that pierce His.
His Heart awaits our heart. Let us console Jesus’s Heart.
For He promises something so great if we do. Do you remember his promises to the St. Margaret Mary Alocoque?
The 12 Promises of the Sacred Heart
I will give them all the graces necessary for their state of life.
I will establish peace in their families.
I will bless every home in which an image of My Heart is exposed and honored.
I will console them in all their difficulties.
I will be their refuge during life and especially at the hour of death.
I will shed abundant blessing upon all their undertakings.
Sinners shall find in My Heart a fountain and boundless ocean of mercy.
Tepid souls shall become fervent.
Fervent souls shall rise speedily to great perfection.
I will give to priests the power of touching the hardest hearts.
Those who propagate this devotion shall have their names written in My Heart never to be blotted out.
I promise you, in the excessive mercy of My Heart that My all-powerful love will grant to all who communicate on the First Friday of the month for nine consecutive months the grace of final penitence; they shall not die in My displeasure nor without their last Sacraments: “My Divine Heart shall be their safe refuge in this last moment.”
O Most Sacred Heart of Jesus…
Have Mercy On Us.
I now conclude as St. Margaret Mary Aloquoque said to Sister Felice-Madeline, I say to you dear sisters, “Good-bye, dear Sisters, so wholly devoted to the Sacred Heart of Our Lord Jesus Christ! May you be wholly consumed in His love.”
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"The future of humanity passes by way of the family."
~ Pope St. John Paul II
WE ARE FAMILIES UNITED IN BUILDING THE KINGDOM.
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