George Tiller murdered

Late-term abortionist George Tiller was gunned down at his church today. It is my prayer that he repented of his sins before he died and is now in Heaven, or at least on his way there in Purgatory.  Pray for him, nonetheless.

See Fr. Frank Pavone’s statement.

Pentecost Prayer

Waiting
for the promised Paraclete,
the apostles prayed ardently with Jesus’ Mother.

Then came the Pentecost day.
Flames of fire
descended upon them,
enlightening
and bringing them
apostolic fervor,
the courage of martyrs,
wisdom,
and the gift of tongues.

Come, Holy Spirit,
Comforter and Confirmer,
come down upon us.
We are waiting for you.
We are asking for you.
We are praying for you

Come and renew us,
come and revive our nation.

Bring us
all the graces we need,
that, united in love,
we may establish
God’s kingdom
in our fatherland.  Amen.

-Servant of God Adelė Dirsytė

Statues

I have posted a new post about statues and Jehovah’s Witnesses at my central blog.

Prayer to Christ the King

Christ our King,
You have descended
from the throne of the cross
to reign in tender hearts.
From the throne of the cross
You have shown
to mankind
the road to the land of bliss.
On the throne of the cross
You have opened to us
the marvelous wealth
of Your Heart.
O King of Souls,
grateful, I thank You
for letting me grow up
in the shade of the cross.
My Savior, allow me,
my dear ones, and my nation,
to feel the warmth
and strength of Your Heart.  Amen.

-Servant of God Adelė Dirsytė

Pray to Him as His Mother

The Church said to Mary:
“Come, and we will go together
to pray to the Son of God
for the sins of the world.

“You will pray to Him
because you have nursed Him,
and I will pray to Him
because I have mingled His Body with my nuptials.

“You will pray to Him as His Mother,
and I will pray to Him as His Bride.
He will listen to His Mother
and respond to His Bride.”

-Chaldean Liturgy

“Mary Save Us”

This past weekend I was in San Antonio and I stopped at Christ the King bookstore and found a little booklet called Mary Save Us published by Our Sunday Visitor.  The title seemed overly provocative to my former Southern Baptist eyes.  Due to the plastic wrap, I couldn’t read in it to see what it was about, but I was too curious to pass it up.  So I shelled out $5.95 plus tax to purchase it.  I do not regret it.

The booklet is a prayerbook written by a Lithuanian woman imprisoned in a Communist concentration camp in Siberia.   The author’s name is Adelė Dirsytė, Servant of God, whose cause for beatification was opened in the year 2000.

The original prayerbook was hand written and reached the United States in 1958.  Nobody knew who wrote the prayers.  The opening page read,

Frances,

We send this prayer book to you in order that you may be able to better feel, think, and worship the Lord together with us.  Lionė made it, Valė drew it, Levutė glued it together, and I wrote it.

Ad

February 16, 1953

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the declaration of Lithuania’s’ independence in 1990, it was discovered that Adelė wrote the prayers.  But she was still a mystery.  Even today, I can find little about her.  There is a brief Wikipedia article in Lithuanian, which I can’t read.  All of my information comes from the introduction to Mary Save Us.

Adelė was born in 1909 to farmers.  She desired to get a higher education, and graduated from secondary school in 1928.  She thereupon enrolled in Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas to study philosophy and theology.  Four years later, she became involved in the Lithuanian Catholic Women’s Association helping the poor, ophans, and Catholic press.  She graduated in 1940.  Soon after this, Lithuania became occupied by the Soviet Union, which began an era of religious oppression.

Adelė became involved in the underground activities of the church and was arrested in 1946.  She was banished to Siberia’s labor camps for 10 years for these “counterrevolutionary” activities.  She did not remain in one camp, however, but rather was transferred from one camp to another over the years.  Activities included building railroads, bridges, edifices, and cutting trees in the forests.

Adelė’s heart was moved with compassion for her fellow prisoners.  She was concerned not only for their physical welfare, but most of all for their spiritual and intellectual welfare.  She organized secret prayer meetings, discussions, and literature sessions.  She made prayer books, including Mary Save Us, and distributed them secretly among the prisoners.  As the greeting above indicates, she involved other prisoners in the production of the prayer books.  Some would glue the pages together, some would embroider the cover, and others would add drawings.

Her activities did not go unnoticed.  She was frequently interrogated at night, beaten, isolated, and tortured.  But she did not lose faith.  At the end of her ten year sentence, her health was failing due to the torture, and she was taken to a prison hospital in Chabarovsky to be finished off.  She died there on  September 26, 1955.

Two years before her death, Mary Save Us, was smuggled out of the camp.  Instead of going to Frances (Pranute), apparently an inmate in another camp, it was taken to Eastern Europe, through the Iron Curtain, and eventually to the United States in 1958.  It was first published in the U.S. in Lithuanian in 1959, but later into many other languages, including English.

The prayers provide a valuable historical record for understanding the plight and spirit of those imprisoned in the camps, but it also allows us to connect most intimately with a modern saint.  Some of the prayers speak directly to the people of Lithuania, but we in other countries can still pray them as well.

Over the next few days, I will be reprinting some of the prayers on this blog.

Prayer for the Beatification of Adelė Dirsytė

(for private use)

God the Father, Source of all holiness, in Your Divine Providence You allowed a young and diligent Catholic youth educator, Adelė Dirsytė, to be banished to Siberia, to a life of inhuman mistreatment, humiliation, and suffering in hard-labor camps.  Notwithstanding toil and torture, she did not succumb to despair.  While remaining faithful to You until her death, by work and example she encouraged her fellow prisoners to follow Your Son, Jesus Christ, along His painful way of the cross.

O Lord, for Your own glory, may Adelė rejoice in Your Divine Presence in heaven, and may she be a brilliant example to us, an inspiring teacher, and a trustworthy intercessor on our behalf.

We ask this through Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Mea culpa

It was my new years resolution to blog more. I failed at that. But i will post again. P romise.

Holy Father’s Prayer Intentions

The Holy Father’s prayer intentions for January:

General: That the family may increasingly be a place of formation in charity, personal growth, and the transmission of the faith.

Mission: That Christian denominations may strive for full unity so as to be more credible witnesses of the Gospel to a world in need of a “new evangelization.”

Prayer: O Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer You my prayers, works, joys, and sufferings of this day in union with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world. I offer them for all the intentions of You Sacred Heart: the salvation of souls, reparation for sin, and the reunion of all Christians. I offer them for the intentions of our bishops and all Apostles of Prayer, and in particular for those recommended by our Holy Father this month.

Mary and Philosophy

From Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Fides et Ratio (On Faith and Reason):

I turn in the end to the woman whom the prayer of the Church invokes as Seat of Wisdom, and whose life itself is a true parable illuminating the reflection contained in these pages. For between the vocation of the Blessed Virgin and the vocation of true philosophy there is a deep harmony. Just as the Virgin was called to offer herself entirely as human being and as woman that God’s Word might take flesh and come among us, so too philosophy is called to offer its rational and critical resources that theology, as the understanding of faith, may be fruitful and creative. And just as in giving her assent to Gabriel’s word, Mary lost nothing of her true humanity and freedom, so too when philosophy heeds the summons of the Gospel’s truth its autonomy is in no way impaired. Indeed, it is then that philosophy sees all its enquiries rise to their highest expression. This was a truth which the holy monks of Christian antiquity understood well when they called Mary “the table at which faith sits in thought”. In her they saw a lucid image of true philosophy and they were convinced of the need to philosophari in Maria.

May Mary, Seat of Wisdom, be a sure haven for all who devote their lives to the search for wisdom. May their journey into wisdom, sure and final goal of all true knowing, be freed of every hindrance by the intercession of the one who, in giving birth to the Truth and treasuring it in her heart, has shared it forever with all the world.

New Year’s Resolution

“Be not solicitous therefore, saying, What shall we eat: or what shall we drink, or wherewith shall we be clothed? For after all these things do the heathens seek. For your Father knoweth that you have need of all these things. Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you.” – Matthew 6:31-33

Every year people make New Year’s resolutions, usually things having to do with your body such as, “lose weight”, “get in shape,” and “stop smoking.”  As good as these things are, let us remember to take care of our souls first.  If we seek the kingdom of God above all else, these things will follow.  After all, our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit.  If we remember this, we will be properly motivated to avoid the glamour of evil and be proper stewards of this temple, our body.

So I recommend that everyone, broadly speaking, vow to be a better Christian.  Particularly, make a resolution like one of the following:

• Pray the Rosary every day/week
• Read the Bible (a Catholic Bible!) every day/week
• Go to Mass at least every Sunday and Holy Day “of Opportunity” [aka. "of obligation"] (N.B.: It is a mortal sin to willfully miss Mass!)
• Go to confession at least once a month (we are required to go at least once a year, if we have committed a mortal sin)
• Receive Communion weekly or more often (assuming you are in a state of grace)
• Read the writings of the pope (such as God is Love)
• Study the documents of the Church Councils, especially Vatican II.
• Read the Church Fathers, such as Augustine (start with his Confessions)
• Pray daily for the souls in Purgatory (see the Handbook of Indulgences)
• Become more active in your parish ministries
• Teach CCE, RCIA, etc.
• Pray in front of abortion clinics for an end to abortion (following your local diocese’s guidelines, of course)
• Visit the sick, and take them communion (following proper guidelines.  Many parishes offer this ministry.)
• Read good Catholic books available from Aquinas and More and Tan Books.
• etc.