Divine Savior Jesus Christ, who has entrusted the whole work of your redemption, the welfare and salvation of the world, to priests as your representatives, through the hands of your most holy Mother and for the sanctification of your priests and candidates for the priesthood, I offer you this present day wholly and entirely, with all its prayers, works, joys, sacrifices and sorrows. Give us truly holy priests who, inflamed with the fire of your divine love, seek nothing but... Read more
Along a dappled woodlands path at St. Francis Retreat Center, DeWitt, Michigan. Images by Margaret Rose Realy, Obl. OSB. All rights reserved. Read more
Sacrifice is not about giving up things. As Fr. Cameron wrote, it is about doing whatever we can to generate as much love as we can…it is the way we eagerly adjust our lives so that our greatest desires for love come true. (Father Peter John Cameron, OP. Jesus, Present Before Me; Meditations for Eucharistic Adoration, Servant Books, 1991, p.34) Read more
Over the past few weeks several friends came to my yard to dig-up flowers and though it felt like they had come en masse to the gardens, they hadn’t. In groups of two’s and three’s they came, they dug, and they left. All were delighted with their trunks and back seats filled to capacity with buckets and boxes of ferns, hostas, anemones, variegated loosestrife, daffodil and hyacinth bulbs, Asiatic, oriental and day- lilies, iris, coreopsis, rose campion, ground covers, vines,... Read more
Lord Jesus, we your people pray to You for our priests. You have given them to us for our needs. We pray for them in their needs. We know that You have made them priests in the likeness of Your own priesthood. You have consecrated them, set them aside, anointed them, filled them with the Holy Spirit, appointed them to teach, to preach, to minister, to console, to forgive, and to feed us with Your Body and Blood. Yet we... Read more
The true beauty of a flower comes when it reaches full bloom, and that takes time. Our lives open up slowly in God’s hands, and in time we too become a beautiful reflection of the Creator. Read more
St. Benedict Monastery where I am preparing to become an Oblate is in Oxford, Michigan. The location of the monastery was chosen because of the land; glaciated hill country rising nearly 1,000 feet above the Great Lakes. It is the second highest point in Michigan, and on a clear day you could see Detroit fifty miles away. The sixty foot wall of glass that is the south side of the sanctuary and behind the tabernacle and altar reveals a breathtaking... Read more
I remember praying this with my grandmother: A PRAYER FOR PRIESTS By John J Cardinal Carberry Keep them; I pray Thee, dearest Lord. Keep them, for they are Thine The priests whose lives burn out before Thy consecrated shrine. Keep them, for they are in the world, Though from the world apart. When earthly pleasures tempt, allure — Shelter them in Thy heart. Keep them and comfort them in hours Of loneliness and pain, When all their life of sacrifice... Read more
Your most fundamental obedience to God may be acceptance of yourself – yourself as you are, with all your particular strengths and weaknesses, your gifts and limitations, all the baggage you carry from your remote and immediate past, all that your life has made you. This person is what God wants, and you must want it too; but such obedience is not a static program, because it (also) means consenting to become through God’s grace the person he wants you... Read more
My great-grandparents emigrated from Italy not long after they were married; my great-grandmother had a three month old son wrapped against her chest and the oldest girl was still in nappies. Another war had broken out in their homeland, and she had known nothing but fighting since her own childhood in the late 1850’s. They left with only as much as they could carry. Headed for Canada, they were to meet family, who had acquired farm land in Hawtrey, Ontario,... Read more
Morning Rose Prayer Gardens
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