Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Change

Change.
I've never been able to decide how I feel about it.
In some cases, change is great, and often times, needed; In other cases, change brings about hurt and many hardships.
It is one of those things that you can't really decide how you feel about it, but only understand it will happen, and you will have to deal with it.

This summer I've gone through alot of change, some good, some bad. I've come to a point though, that regardless of if I like it or not, I've learned to deal with it. When the summer began, I was excited for it, and looked forward to not taking classes anymore, and finally having time to read. I also was sad that most of my friends were going home for the summer, and I would have to go without them for a while. I was dealing with change. I was also moving out of the dorm, and back home, which, at the time when it happened, I was not excited about. Now, a few months into the summer, I feel like I haven't been home enough, and am definitely going to miss it. More change. I can also say that people I thought I'd hang with alot, like my local friends, I've seen very little. I'm not mad about it, or happy about it. I have come to a point where I just accept it.
I guess what I've learned this summer is, above all else, change will happen, if I'm ready for it or not.

This upcoming semester will be no different.
New classes, new people, new friendships.
Old friends gone, and I'll have to move on. Not forget, but just live life.

Basically, Change is always happening, and I'm going to have to be ready.

"HE DIED FOR ME, SO I WILL LIVE FOR HIM"

Monday, July 16, 2012

St. Louis de Montfort Part Two - The Secret of Mary

"The Secret of Mary"
by
St. Louis de Montfort

I posted a blog on St. Louis de Montfort last week, and now I am following it up with my favorite quotes from the book. I've read a decent amount of stuff in my life, but this book might have been the most important one to date, besides maybe scripture reading.
Didn't read part one? Here is the link:
http://gottablogcatholic.blogspot.com/2012/07/st-louis-de-montfort.html

Opening Pages -
"God Alone"

Section 3 -
"Your sure vocation is the acquisition of the holiness of God, and unless all your thoughts and words and actions, all the sufferings and events of your life tend to that end, you are resisting God by not doing that for which He has created you and is now preserving you."

"Only God by His grace, by His abundant and extraordinary grace, can make man like God. Even the creation of the whole world is not so great a masterpiece as this."

Section 4 -
"What means will you choose to reach the height to which God calls you? They are humility of heart, continual prayer, mortification in all things, abandonment to Divine Providence and conformity to the will of God."

Section 5 -
"God does not give equal grace to all, yet to each soul He gives sufficient grace."

Section 6 -
"I say that to find this grace of God, we must find Mary."

Section 7 -
"Mary alone has found grace with God, both for herself and for every man in particular."

Section 8 -
"Mary gave being and life to the Author of all grace, and that is why she is called the Mother of Grace."

Section 10 -
"God has entrusted Mary with the keeping, the administration and distribution of all His graces, so that all His graces and gifts pass through her hands."

Section 12 -
"Since Mary has formed Jesus Christ, the Head of the elect, it is also her office to form the members of that Head, that is to say, all true Christians."

Section 16 -
"A sculptor has two ways of making a lifelike statue or figure... The second is short, easy and smooth; it requires little work and slight expense, provided the mold be perfect and made to reproduce the figure exactly; provided, moreover, the material used offer no resistance to the hand of the artist."

Section 17 -
Whoever is cast in it, and allows himself to be molded, receives all the features of Jesus Christ, true God."

Section 18 -
"Oh what a difference between a soul which has been formed in Christ by the ordinary ways of those who, like the sculptor, trust in their own skill and ingenuity."

Section 19 -
"There does not exist and never will exist a creature in whom God, either within of without himself, is so highly exalted as He is in the most Blessed Virgin Mary, no excepting the Saints or the Cherubim or the highest Seraphim in Paradise."

"God has made a world for wayfaring man, which is that world in which we dwell; He has made one for man in his glorified state, which is Heaven; and he made one for himself, which he has called Mary."

Section 21 -
"The Saints tell us that when we have once found Mary, and through Mary, Jesus, and through Jesus, God the Father, we have found all good."

Section 22 -
"Mary the Mother of the living, gives to all her children portions of the Tree of life, which is the Cross of Jesus. But along with their crosses she also imparts the grace to carry them patiently and even cheerfully."

Section 28 -
The Perfect Devotion
"It consists of giving oneself entirely and as a slave to Mary, and to Jesus through Mary; and after that to do all that we do, with Mary, in Mary, through Mary and for Mary."

Section 29 -
"By this devotion the soul sacrifices to Jesus, through Mary, all that it holds most dear... The soul leaves everything to be freely disposed of by Our Lady so that she may apply it all according to her own will for the greater glory of God, which she alone knows perfectly."

Section 30 -
"We leave to her disposal all the satisfactory and impetratory value of our good works - We are no longer the master of any good work we may do; but Our Lady may apply them, sometimes for the relief or the deliverance of a soul in Purgatory, sometimes for the conversion of a sinner, etc."

Section 32 -
"There are three types of slavery. The first is the slavery of nature; in this sense all men, good and bad alike, are slaves of God. The second is slavery of constraint; the devils and the damned are slaves of God in this second sense. The third is the slavery of love and free will; and this is one by which we must consecrate ourselves to God through Mary."

Section 33 -
"He who is a slave by constraint is rigorously dependent on his master. A man must be dependent in that sense only on his Creator."

Section 34 -
"Happy and a thousand times happy is the generous soul that consecrates itself entirely to Jesus through Mary as a slave of love after it has shaken off by Baptism the tyrannical slavery of the devil!"

Section 36 -
"To go to Jesus through Mary is truly to honor Jesus Christ."

Section 37 -
"To consecrate ourselves thus to Jesus through Mary is to place in Mary's hands our good actions."

Section 38 -
"How insignificant everything we do really is!"

"When we have given ourselves to Mary to the very utmost of our power, she will far outdo us in generosity and will repay us a hundredfold."

Section 39 -
"To give ourselves thus to Our Lady is to practice charity towards our neighbor in the highest possible degree, because we give her all that we hold most dear and her dispose of it at her will in favor of the living and the dead."

Section 40 -

"All I have I entrust to thee."

"Were there but this one motive to incite in me a desire for this devotion - namely, that it is a sure means of keeping me in the grace of God and even of increasing that grace in me, my heart ought to burn with longing for it."

Section 41 -
"This devotion truly frees the soul with the liberty of the children of God."

Section 43 -
"This devotion consists in doing all actions with Mary, in Mary through Mary and for Mary."

Section 45 -
"The essential practice of this devotion to do all our actions with Mary."

"We must place ourselves as instruments in the hands of Mary."

Section 47 -
"We must do all things in Mary."

Section 48 -
"We must never go to Our Lord except through Mary, through her intercession and her influence with Him. We must never be without Mary when we pray to Jesus."

Section 49 -
"We must do all our actions for Mary."

"In everything we do, we must renounce our self-love."

Section 53 -
"Experience will teach you much more about this devotion than I can tell you."

Section 55 -
"This devotion, faithfully practiced, produces many happy effects in the soul. The most important of them all is that it establishes Mary's life in the soul, so that it is no longer the soul that lives, but Mary living in it."

Section 56 -
"She will cause Jesus Christ to live in that soul, and the soul to live in constant union with Jesus Christ."

Section 57 -
"Mary becomes everything to that soul in the service of Jesus Christ."

Part IV - The Tree of Life -

Section 1 -
"You must make the sacrifice of yourself to the Blessed Mother, you must disappear in her, so that you may find God alone. If the Holy Ghost has planted in your soul the true Tree of Life, which is the devotion that I have just explained to you, you must do all that you can to cultivate it, in order that it may yield its fruit in due season."

"This Tree, once planted in a faithful heart, requires the open air and freedom from all human support, clear from any creatures that might prevent it... You must not rely on your own skill or natural talents... You must have recourse to Mary and rely on her help alone."

Section 3 -
"We must crucify the flesh, keep recollected and mortify our senses."

"Most happy is the soul which relishes and preserves Mary's fruit until death, and for ever and ever."

Well if you read all of this, congrats. This is what stood out to me in the book!

"He died for me, so I will live for him."





Friday, July 13, 2012

The Presidential Election -2012

The 2012 Presidential Election
The Election is quickly approaching and everyone needs to know who they are going to vote for.
As Catholics though, we need to put certain issues ahead of all others. We need to remember to follow our Morals and the Church teachings. I found this video and it does a good job of explaining what we must do!



Tuesday, July 10, 2012

St. Louis de Montfort and the Consecration

Born - January 31, 1673 Died - April 28, 1716

Well known for his Total Consecration to Mary, St. Louis de Montfort is easily becoming one of my favorite Saints. He was a man who sought after God's heart and wanted nothing in return. He took no credit for his works, but said that all he did was done by the Father.

Growing up, St. Louis lived in Montfort-sur-Meu, a small town in northern France. His parents raised him Catholic, and at the age of 12, he went to school in Rennes. While at school there, St. Louis had a strong desire to be a priest and do Missionary work. He worked hard and studied Philosophy and Theology. At the age of 20, he moved to Paris to continue pursing the Priesthood. While there, he became very sick, but eventually regained his health, and went back to pursuing the Priesthood, studying at St. Sulpice. While there, St. Louis worked in the the library, and from that spent much of his time reading. This helped him form a deep devotion to Our Lady.

In 1700, at the age of 27, St. Louis de Montfort became a priest and was assigned to Nantes. From letters, it became clear that St. Louis had become frustrated with his present situation, saying that he thought he needed to be preach to the poor. After five months of his ordination, he joined the Third Order Dominicans and formed a group of close religious who helped him preach to the poor.

For several years he preached to the people of Brittany and Nantes, and did whatever he could to serve the poor. After years of service there, St. Louis travelled around France teaching and doing all sorts of Mission work. He was regarded as having a heated style of preaching, and it did cause for some problems, but St. Louis de Montfort did not let anything stop him.

The Bishop of La Rochelle was so impressed by St. Louis de Montfort's work, that he helped him open up a school there, for poor boys and girls. After just a short time, the school had 400 kids.

Worn out by hard work and sickness, he finally came to Saint-Laurent-sur-Sèvre. During  his time there, he fell ill and died on April 28, 1716. He was 43 years old, and had been a priest for only 16 years. His last sermon was on the tenderness of Jesus and the Incarnate Wisdom of the Father. Thousands gathered for his burial in the parish church, and very quickly there were stories of miracles performed at his tomb.

He was later canonized a Saint by Pope Pius XII on July 27, 1947 and his feast day is April 28th.

So why am I doing a blog about St. Louis de Montfort? Well, it seems people don't know much about him, including myself. This man wrote many things on God and Mary and as I find myself diving into it all, it is truly beautiful. The book I am reading at this moment is called, "The Secret of Mary" and it talks about the consecration. When I decided to do the consecration, I was warned that I might not be ready for it, but I said I was and went through with it. Until recently, I thought I had done fine with it, and I was truly consecrating myself to God, through Mary. Then I opened up one of St. Louis' books and wow, was I off.

In "The Secret of Mary," he talks about Devotions to Mary, and I thought my devotion was what I had agreed to when I did the consecration, just a less spiritual version of what he did. I knew I was not coming close to his spirituality, but I thought I was following the Consecration. The book though, is changing my mind and enlightening me. The first devotion to Mary he talks about is one without special practices, and I looked at that, and decided I do have special practices. I of course was patting myself on the back, saying, "I knew I was doing this right!" Then the next thing he talked about was a devotion with special practices, practices that include the rosary, wearing a scapular, honoring icon's of Our Lady and all of that. I read this and said, I'm doing this! This is what he was calling me to right?

He then says:
"This devotion is good, holy and praiseworthy, if we keep ourselves free from sin; but it is not so perfect as the next, nor so efficient in severing our soul from creatures or in detaching us from ourselves, in order to be united with Jesus Christ."  (The Secret of Mary, Section 26)
After reading that, I asked myself, what else is a better devotion then that? St. Louis de Montfort tells the reader that the third devotion is:
"It consists in giving oneself entirely and as a slave to Mary, and to Jesus through Mary; and after that to do all that we do, with Mary, in Mary, through Mary and for Mary."

The book explains to the reader that the devotion tells the reader two things: One being that this act is a TOTAL consecration to Jesus through Mary and secondly, there is a state of being totally consecrated. This states calls us to a "Permanent disposition of living and acting habitually independent on Mary." The book explains that the practice will seem small at first, as St. Louis de Montfort compares it to a mustard seed, but after persistent exercise, we can see its wondrous effects.

St. Louis de Montfort explains everything in this book, and after reading this, I have learned that though my consecration is a sad excuse for anything, it has time to grow, as long as I continue to exercise everything. I am not done with the book, but I will continue to read it and I urge anyone who has done the consecration to do so as well. This book, along with St. Louis de Montfort's other writings offer so much, and I know that I'll be reading them all.

If you want to fully consecrate yourself to Jesus, through Mary, you will do whatever seems necessary.
I am glad you read this, and I am praying for you all! Pray for me as well!

"He died for me, so I will live for Him!"

Part II - St. Louis de Montfort - Secret of Mary

Monday, July 2, 2012

YOLO

Living Life to the Fullest
Blog #18

We have all played or seen the boardgame: The game of LIFE. Sounds fun, a boardgame
based around living life. You start out by either choosing to go to College or not, and then role from there. Sure, you miss the first 18 or so years of your life, but for the games sake, it is not important. In the end, the winner is the person with the most money. Basically, a successful life is determined by the amount of money you make.

Well, Milton Bradley-
 You are wrong about that.

This past weekend, I found myself on the computer checking facebook when I came upon a post by a friend of mine, telling me and others that Tyler Peltier, a recent Franciscan Graduate, had passed away. I knew who Tyler was, and when I saw him, always said hello and asked how he was doing, but that was it. Normally a death like this would sadden me, and I'd say a few prayers, but I wouldn't let it effect me all that much. For some reason, Tyler's death was different. My first response was to tell people and ask them to pray for him and his family. I found myself outside on the phone, calling my brother. By the time I got him on the phone, I could barely speak, and started crying, harder then I have ever cried before. I was able to get across to Mike that Tyler had died, and also tell my dad, but the tears would not stop. I found myself looking up to the sky and asking, "Why God? He is so young!" In the game of LIFE, tyler would be on spot one.

After a minute or so, I reminded myself that the Lord's plan was not always the one we wanted, and there is no age that we are "suppose to" live to. I knew Tyler was headed to a better place, but it was still tough to think about.

"You give and take away, but my heart will choose to say, Lord Blessed be your name!" This song came to mind, and I found some peace. Tyler was lucky, hopefully headed to some place much better, but its easy to say, not easy to believe. I am still coming to terms with the fact that at any moment, the Lord could call me or someone close to me home. I want so desperately to live a good life on this earth, and enjoy my time here while living for Christ, but Tyler's death made me realize I am not doing enough.

Then I remembered the ever catchy phrase Y.O.L.O. , and I'd like to think it is not talking about living the life of excess and partying, but more a reminder that you have one life, and though your actions might not leave a permant mark in books and such, they will when it comes to ETERNAL LIFE. It's Heaven or Hell, and guess what, we choose which one-way ticket we get.

I don't write this to scare people but the truth is, and I am seeing this more and more in my daily life, we need to make the best of our lives or suffer the consequences.......
I'd rather suffer good consequences. Just saying.
What is living the best life? Well, it is trying to be a Saint! If you know me, and if you continue to read my blog, I talk about this often, normally daily in my conversations. I want you to know, I'm not doing a good job with it, but I am refreshed daily and I look to continue to grow. I ask for the Holy Spirit to guide me in my speach and thoughts, and I look to not make too many stupid mistakes.

I think this is all we can do. Fight the good fight, pursue holiness, and pray that God is merciful. We are all sinners, and we all give in to the temptations of this world, but we can still live holy lives if we seek God's help. Failure it ineviable, but that is when we get back up. get to confession and try again. Tyler was not a perfect man, but he was a good man, and from what I could see, he tried to live out his heavenly calling. We must do the same.

I will finish with this:
YOLO - He died for us, so we must live for him!
 
Pray for Tyler and his family.
Rest in Peace my friend and enjoy Heaven. Hope to see you there one day.
Tyler Peltier- Born February 12, 1990 Died June 30, 2012