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Today I visited St. Basil the Great Byzantine Church in Irving, TX.   The priest mentioned that from August 1, to August 14, leading up to the feast of the Dormition of the Blessed Virgin (called the Assumption by the west), it is customary to fast.  I highly recommend that we all take part in the beautiful tradition.  The fast need not be a total fast, though it can be if you are up to it.  But it can be from meat or a particular type of food, or you can limit yourself to one or two meals a day.  The priest didn’t mention any rules regarding fasting, but he said the website I linked to above has some ideas on how to fast.  But I have been unable to locate it.  So, as a friend once told me, if something is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.  In other words, after consulting the Lord in prayer, let us fast in a way that seems appropriate, until someone tell us otherwise.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.