Give
the gift that Counts.
Blow Out Sale for Reprinting of Blue Book 1, 2
& 3
While Supplies Last
Blue Book 1 -
$4 each plus postage
Blue Book 2 - $4 each plus postage
Blue Book 3 - $3 each plus postage
Call 1-888-211-3041 for Doris
Blue Book 15 Available
Introductory Price $5.00 plus postage
November 1, 2015
November 1, 2015 - All Saints Day
R. Dear Jesus,
Please help the Church and the world –
We pray the prayers You gave Fr. Carter for
the priests, the Church and the world.
Dear God help us.
Please help the election in the United States – so
the person put in will serve You.
God has given us the opportunity to follow
Him and to have happiness forever
in heaven –
God wants us to see through His eyes – His
vision for the world and to pray for
the priests, the Church and the world.
R. We focus on Christ, we live in Him, we
pray to the Holy Spirit to help us see
the vision of God.
God give us the grace to see through the
eyes of our Heavenly Father and to live
according to Your plan.
Help us to rise above this earthly vision and
to see through Your eyes, oh Heavenly Father.
This attainment of seeing more and more the
vision of God will lead men to happiness.
Happiness is in God.
God gives us His Commandments, the Word,
the Church to keep us on the right
path. These are great gifts guiding
us as we go through our life.
God did not put us on the earth to find our
own way. God is guiding us and telling
us what we should do to have happiness.
R. A man enslaved to doing his own will – thinks
this is freedom, but the man enslaved
to doing everything his way and ignoring
God is a slave to the evil one who
is fooling him while the man
thinks he is independent.
God has shown us the independence of
Adam and Eve in the Garden and the
misery it brought and the disorder
it brought to the whole human race –
God gives us laws to live by and obeying
God leads to happiness and
real freedom.
We are here to realize happiness comes
in having the vision of God, recognizing
God as our Master and our dependence
on Him and living according to His
will in love.
Our whole life is to seek this vision
of God – to pray for the grace from
the Holy Spirit to not fall into the misery of
trying to live a life going against God's will
for our control –
It's like swimming against the current,
to have a bad end, when we could swim
with the current and be united to God
in loving dependence according to his
will – His vision – His laws.
Jesus paid the price for our sins.
Jesus showed us He obeyed His Father's
will to His death on the cross; Jesus
carried His cross, bloodied and beaten
and crowned with thorns.
We can do what we do obeying God for
love of God and love of souls – for
the honor and glory of God.
The saints showed us this – living the
vision of God –
Pope John Paul II, St. Stephen, St. Peter,
St. Paul, St. John, St. Maria Goretta,
St. Therese the Little Flower, St. Lawrence,
Holy men and women living the vision of God
to receive a crown of glory forever in heaven.
We see the Blessed Mother – she loved the
Father's will – she lived to please the
Heavenly Father.
Priestly Newsletter Book II -
September/October 1997
Scriptural Reflections
In all
this Mary offers an example. Selfishness was totally foreign to
her. She did not belong to herself. She belonged to God. She was
not closed in upon herself. She was completely open to God. When
God spoke, she listened. When God pointed the way, she followed.
She realized that life is not a process a person masters by
carefully mapping out one's own self-conceived plans of
conquest, but a mystery to be gradually experienced by being
open to God's personal and loving guidance.
Selfishness, then, did not close Mary off from God's call.
Neither did fear. God asked her to assume a tremendous
responsibility. He asked her to be the Mother of Jesus. Mary did
not engage in a process of false humility and say that such a
great role was above her. She did not say that she did not have
the proper qualifications for this awesome mission. Briefly, she
did not waste time looking at herself, making pleas that she was
not worthy, telling the angel he had better go look for someone
else. No, Mary did not look at herself. Her gaze was absorbed in
God. She fully realized that whatever God asked of her, His
grace would accomplish. She fully realized that although she
herself had to cooperate, this work was much more God's than
hers.
Mary's words, then, truly sum up what is the authentic Christian
response at any point of life, in any kind of situation: "I am
the handmaid of the Lord," said Mary, "let what you have said be
done to me".
end of excerpt
R. Mary said "yes" to God
Call – Response
November 4, 2013
R. Mary lived in the vision of God
Luke 1: 46-55
And Mary said:
My soul proclaims
the greatness of the Lord
and my spirit rejoices
in God my Saviour;
because he has looked upon
the humiliation of his servant.
Yes, from now onwards
all generations will call me blessed,
for the Almighty
has done great things for me.
Holy is his name,
and his faithful love extends age after age
to those who fear him.
He has used the power of his arm,
he has routed the arrogant of heart.
He has pulled down princes
from their thrones
and raised high the lowly.
He has filled the starving with good things,
sent the rich away empty.
He has come to the help
of Israel his servant,
mindful of his faithful love
—according to the promise
he made to our ancestors—
of his mercy to Abraham
and to his descendants for ever.
R. We are to live to be more and more holy –
We are to live to be more and more loving –
We are to live to love God's will –
We are to live to pray to see the vision of God –
All this brings happiness –
Surrender to God's vision – this is the message
of the Blue Books –
Read the messages
R. We live the suffering and joys God gives to
us in our lives.
We follow the footsteps of Jesus and pray
to help bring down grace for the
Church and the world.
We see Jesus as a little boy in the Temple
doing His Father's will –
He went out to the doctors in the Church –
We are called to go out –
To be free to do God's will –
Parents must let children go at a
certain age to do God's will –
If we meditate on the finding in the temple –
does that tell us that children at
a certain age have their own
call from God and we as parents
are not to block the response
to God's will children are to do
in living their lives according
to the Father's will –
Mary's
Message
from the Rosary of August 27, 1996
Mary:
I stood beneath the cross of my Son, and my Heart was in such pain for I
saw Him before my eyes. I saw Him covered with blood. I saw Him die. My
Heart, my children, my Heart to watch my Son, but my Heart, my Heart, how I
suffered for my little children of the world that give in to this world and
give up the love of my Son. O my little children of light, I give you this
message. Carry this light into the darkness for your Mother Mary, for I
stood beneath the cross and I cried. I cried for the little ones. I cried
for the young ones, the ones that do not care and will lose their souls. How
do I make you see for you will not listen to me? What can I do? I come. I
appear. I beg. I plead. I give you these gifts from my Son, and you reject
me. I do not deliver messages very often anymore for I have been ignored.
The message is the same. You do not read the messages I have given to you.
Please help me. Help the little children. I appear. I appear. I appear, and
I am ignored. I stood beneath the cross, and I cried. I cried, and my Heart
was in such anguish for my little children, for I am searching for them this
day as I searched for the Child Jesus. Please, please help me. I cannot hold
back the hand of my Son any longer. I am Mary, your Mother. I ask you to
help my children. You are my children of light.
end of Mary's Message
R. Every day is a gift from God and we cannot
live it again –
holding back on God, manipulating
people's lives is not being obedient
to God even if we are doing a good
thing –
God wants us to say "yes"
to not interfere with others being
called by God – blocking ourselves
and blocking them –
God has a tremendous plan for this world
and people are called to the plan –
Some can block others doing God's work
because they want things their way,
they want their own space,
they keep doing good things, but they
do it independently – their own
way –
God has a plan, a vision and it takes
the Holy Spirit and His grace to surrender
to the vision of God and get
out of the way –
God gives us laws to bring things in an
orderly fashion to happiness and
holiness.
We are to work with others – in love –
to try to solve problems lovingly –
to obey just authority over us –
I remember a story a man told me once –
He was at the bank and over many,
many people and one woman
did the work of four people, but she
didn't work with anybody else –
she wanted to be a one-person show –
It didn't work – people need to interact
and work together as a community –
he said he had to let her go and hire
the four other people needed to be
working with each other to do the
job.
Our life is to be lived working under God
and learning to trust others and to
be consistent and trustworthy and trustful
ourselves.
We must learn to work as a community, to
go out and see with the eyes of God –
to not get in the way of the plan of
God –
who He is choosing to do the work –
A man lived on a street and he never
looked at anyone in the neighborhood –
He was in his 60's and one day he
had a heart attack and he only
thought of himself and never made any
friends –
he died in his house and they never
found him until weeks later –
As we get old we realize our dependence
more and more on others. God has
it this way – the body wears out,
but the soul goes on –
God has a plan and it is bigger than nuts
and bolts and production of things –
God wants us to learn, we are under God –
God wants us to see through His eyes
the vision He has and to
Respond to God's call, to show
we know how to trust and
work in love with others
He calls us to work with –
Come Holy Spirit fill our hearts with Your
gifts –
help us to live virtuously
Excerpt from Response in Christ
by Fr. Edward Carter, S.J.
e) Relationship with Members of the Church
There
is but one true Church of Christ. Yet this one Church has three different
states of existence. There is the pilgrim Church, the Church of this world,
composed of members who have received the grace of Christ and strive for its
development. They have not yet obtained the goal of their efforts, as have
the members of the heavenly Church, who enjoy God in eternal happiness. The
Church suffering is an intermediate state of existence necessary for those
who had not achieved the required purification as members of the pilgrim
Church. Although there are these three phases of the Church’s existence,
there is a profound union existing between all the members. All these
members possess the same basic life of grace in Christ, and this common life
establishes the most intimate bonds of love. In our preceding chapter, we
discussed the pilgrim Church. Let us now consider the Church suffering and
the heavenly Church.
The
members of the Church suffering are those who have departed from this life
in an incomplete state of Christian development. Their development is
incomplete in the sense that grace has not fully taken possession of them,
and, as a result, they are yet closed in upon themselves to a greater or
lesser degree. They as yet cannot open themselves out in complete love to
the Triune God in the beatific vision. They must undergo a further
purification, a purification which could have been achieved upon earth with
merit. Now the purification must be achieved with no merit attached. The
pain of this purification is mixed with the certain expectation of achieving
the vision of God. We can hasten the advent of this vision for this people
by the offering of prayers and other good works. Scripture itself refers to
our action on behalf of those in purgatory in Chapter 12 of the Second Book
of Maccabees beginning with verse 38.
The
members of the heavenly Church are those in whom the life of grace has taken
full possession and has reached its completion in the life of glory. Faith
now is unnecessary, as the light of glory gives the human intellect a new
strength and capacity for seeing God face-to-face. While the Christian was a
wayfarer, he received the imprint of the indwelling Trinity as he shared in
God’s own life. Now in heaven that grace-life and possession of God
reaches its completion—the absolute completion is not achieved, however,
until the resurrection of the body. The divine persons give Themselves to
the beatified in a profound union far surpassing that of the indwelling of
the Trinity experienced here below.
This
life of heaven is still the Christ-life, for just as we possess a share in
Trinitarian life here below as mediated by Christ, and exercise this
grace-life as structured by Him, so also in heaven is the mediation of
Christ present. In the words of Rahner, "One always sees the Father
through Jesus. Just as immediately as this, for the directness of the vision
of God is not a denial of the mediatorship of Christ as man."14
And not only does the humanity of Christ unite the blessed to
God, but also, in some way, to the whole of creation. This is merely a
completion of what is begun here below, namely, the union with Christ in His
humanity establishing the Christian in a special relationship with God, with
other men, and with the whole of creation. We have a glimpse, therefore, of
the fullness of life which members of the heavenly Church possess.
The
heavenly Church, as St. Thomas says, is the true Church.15
The Church of this earth and the Church of purgatory are,
each in its own way, reaching out in loving hope for the heavenly Jerusalem.
Vatican II puts it very simply: "The Church, to which we are called in
Christ Jesus, and in which we acquire sanctity through the grace of God,
will attain her full perfection only in the glory of heaven."16
The
members of the heavenly Church can help us in living our life of grace until
we too share its fullness with them. Their power of intercession on our
behalf is but another ramification of the communal aspect of Christianity.
We are meant to help others grow in Christ. We, in turn, are intended by God
to receive aid from others—yes, from members of the heavenly Church, as
well as from those with whom we dwell here below.
Not
only can we be aided by the saints’ intercession, but the example of the
canonized saints can also be of great value to us. They have concretely
proved that full holiness is possible. Such an inspiration is of real worth
when we are tempted to think that Christian sanctity in its higher degrees
is impossible of attainment. Moreover, the canonized saints, in their
diversity, teach us that there are many authentic versions of Christian
holiness. They can be innovators in showing us that there are numerous
possibilities in assimilating the mystery of Christ, although the basic
assimilation remains the same for all Christians of all times. In the
opinion of Rahner this is one of the chief roles the canonized saints exert
in the life of the Church.17
NOTES:
14Karl Rahner,
Theological Investigations, Vol. III (Baltimore: Helicon, 1967), p. 44.
15 Cf. St. Thomas Aquinas, In Ad Ephes., c. 3, Lect. 3.
16Second Vatican Council, Constitution on the Church, No.
48.
17Cf. Karl Rahner, Op. cit., pp. 100-101.
November 1, 2015
Readings for All Saints
Revelation 7: 2-4, 9-14
Then I saw another angel rising
where the sun rises, carrying the seal of the living God; he
called in a powerful voice to the four angels whose duty was to
devastate land and sea, ‘Wait before you do any damage on land
or at sea or to the trees, until we have put the seal on the
foreheads of the servants of our God.’ And I heard how many
had been sealed: a hundred and forty–four thousand, out of all
the tribes of Israel.
The rewarding of the saints
After that I saw that there was a
huge number, impossible for anyone to count, of people from
every nation, race, tribe and language; they were standing in
front of the throne and in front of the Lamb, dressed in white
robes and holding palms in their hands. They shouted in a loud
voice, ‘Salvation to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the
Lamb!’ And all the angels who were standing in a circle round
the throne, surrounding the elders and the four living
creatures, prostrated themselves before the throne, and touched
the ground with their foreheads, worshipping God with these
words:
Amen. Praise and glory and
wisdom,
thanksgiving and honour
and power and strength
to our God for ever and ever. Amen.
One of the elders then spoke
and asked me, ‘Who are these people, dressed in white robes, and
where have they come from?’ I answered him, ‘You can tell me,
sir.’ Then he said, ‘These are the people who have been through
the great trial; they have washed their robes white again in the
blood of the Lamb.
Psalm 24 (V23)
For a solemn entry into the
sanctuary
Psalm Of David
To Yahweh belong the earth and
all it contains,
the world and all who live there;
it is he who laid its foundations on the seas,
on the flowing waters fixed it firm.
Who shall go up to the mountain
of Yahweh?
Who shall take a stand in his holy place?
The clean of hands and pure of
heart,
whose heart is not set on vanities,
who does not swear an oath in order to deceive.
Such a one will receive blessing
from Yahweh,
saving justice from the God of his salvation.
Such is the people that seeks him,
that seeks your presence, God of Jacob.
1 John 3: 1-3
You must see what great love
the Father has lavished on us
by letting us be called God’s children—
which is what we are!
The reason why the world
does not acknowledge us
is that it did not acknowledge him.
My dear friends,
we are already God’s children,
but what we shall be in the future
has not yet been revealed.
We are well aware that when he appears
we shall be like him,
because we shall see him as he really is.
First condition: to break with
sin
Whoever treasures this hope of
him
purifies himself, to be as pure as he is.
Matthew 5: 1-12
The Beatitudes
Seeing the crowds, he went onto the mountain.
And when he was
seated his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak. This
is
what he taught them:
How blessed are the poor in spirit:
the kingdom of Heaven is theirs.
Blessed are the gentle:
they shall have the earth as inheritance.
Blessed are those who mourn:
they shall be comforted.
Blessed are those
who hunger and thirst for uprightness:
they shall have their fill.
Blessed are the merciful:
they shall have mercy shown them.
Blessed are the pure in heart:
they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers:
they shall be recognised
as children of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted
in the cause of uprightness:
the kingdom of Heaven is theirs.
Blessed are you when people abuse you and
persecute you and
speak all kinds of calumny against you falsely on my account.
Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven;
this
is how they persecuted the prophets before you.
From Fr. Joe's homily
R. All Saints – it's intent was to honor
all the martyrs.
Blessed Mother, St. John, St. Paul, etc.
are holy persons the
Church honors.
Pope John Paul II entered 110 names
St. Maximilian Kolbe
St. Rose worked among
St. Padre Pio –
Pope Benedict XVI added some 40 some
more
St. Damian
St. Jeanne Jugan started Little Sisters of the Poor
Pope Francis canonized many new saints
Pope John Paul II
On October 18th he canonized a married
couple – parents of the Little
Flower –
Saints do not need honor from us – if we
venerate their memory it serves us –
they can intercede for us when we need
help –
We ask our friends to pray for us, why not
ask God's friends to pray for us –
Saint means holy –
From the children's Mass at Fr. Joe's
Sing: Gather Us In
Ephesians 2: 19-22
So you are no longer aliens or
foreign visitors; you are fellow–citizens with the holy people of
God and part of God’s household. You are built upon the foundations
of the apostles and prophets, and Christ Jesus himself is the
cornerstone. Every structure knit together in him grows into a holy
temple in the Lord; and you too, in him, are being built up into a
dwelling–place of God in the Spirit.
"Their message goes out to all the world"
Rejoice – God is with us –
Rejoice and be glad –
Rejoice – this reality
Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia
Luke 6: 12-16
The choice of the Twelve
Now it happened in those
days that he went onto the mountain to pray; and he spent the whole
night in prayer to God. When day came he summoned his disciples and
picked out twelve of them; he called them ‘apostles’: Simon whom he
called Peter, and his brother Andrew, James, John, Philip,
Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Simon called
the Zealot, Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot who became a
traitor.
R. Earlier this week we celebrated the Feast -
Simon and Jude - Apostles –
There were 12 Apostles we heard in the Gospel. We don't know
a lot about some of them. Simon was a zealot – kind of
a terrorist – but Jesus picked some interesting people –
Sunday we celebrate All Saints – in the encyclopedia
of saints there are over 6,000 names. The Church has
a feast of the Apostle every month –
Every building has a foundation – The foundation
of the Church is on the Apostles –
We must pray for ourselves and our friends that
we will be saints someday.
Lord guide Your Church through the Holy Spirit –
Help us to do what we can to renew the
Church and the world –
Song: Here I Am Lord
Sing: Anthem
November 1, 2015
From a homily of Fr. Joe's
R. God will ask us at the last judgment –
What did you do with the gifts
I have given you –
A talent in the Gospel is money
and a lot of money –
The 3rd servant wanted to
bury his money so it
wouldn't be stolen –
he was considered lazy –
The gifts God gives us He doesn't
want them back – He
wants us to use them for
God's honor and glory –
God wants us to be successfully
spiritually
The Master doesn't tell them in the
Gospel what to do with their
money –
The Master thinks they will do what
he wants them to do with
their money –
The Master was giving the money
as a personal gift to
each man –
God gives us gifts to use to
help others –
God doesn't want us to bury our
gifts –
Using the gifts God gives us to help
us to be successful in our
spiritual life –
Those who put their gifts
to good use were happy.
Some hold onto their gifts
for themselves.
Use
Your Talents
Copyright
© 2014 Shepherds of Christ.