Katie Souza: God's Love Found in Lockdown

CBN TV - Video

The following excerpt is from CBN.com:

This salvation story proves that God can find a lost soul anywhere... even in solitary confinement.

Katie Souza says,“I remember slumping back against that cold cement wall, thinking, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ I had been fighting everybody out on the streets, and now I’m fighting everybody inside. I didn’t even realize I was fighting God Himself. Right then, the Lord spoke to me. ‘I want you to surrender to your captivity, because this is My plan and it’s perfect.’”

Katie prayed to become a Christian. She read the Bible and shared what she was learning with her fellow inmates.

“The only book in the whole place was the Bible. I remember picking it up, reading through it and I just thought that this is the coolest thing I’ve ever read in my life. This is amazing. I would go from the front to the back over and over again. As I did that, the Holy Spirit began to point out these Scriptures about these people called the ancient Israelites who went to prison. I was going, ‘Wow, this is my story. It’s the story of every con I’d ever known. I started getting excited about it, and I started teaching it to everyone that I could teach it to.”

Her tough girl attitude and reputation began to change.

Read More: Katie Souza

Give Thanks and Praise to Our Lord for His Blessings!

Photo by Loci B. Lenar

 

 

Thanksgiving Table Prayer

 

O Gracious God, we give you thanks for your overflowing generosity to us. Thank you for the blessings of the food we eat and especially for this feast today. Thank you for our home and family and friends, especially for the presence of those gathered here. Thank you for our health, our work and our play. Please send help to those who are hungry, alone, sick and suffering war and violence. Open our hearts to your love. We ask your blessing through Christ your son. Amen.

 

From Celebrating Faith: Year-round Activities For Catholic Families, by Mary Cronk Farrell

 

 

For Appreciation of Each Other

We thank you, Father, for the gift of Jesus your Son who came to our earth and lived in a simple home. We have a greater appreciation of the value and dignity of the human family because he loved and was loved within its shelter. Bless us this day; may we grow in love for each other in our family and so give thanks to you who are the maker of all human families and our abiding peace.

From The Catholic Prayer Book, compiled by Msgr. Michael Buckley

 

 

In Gratitude

 

Thank you, Father, for having created us and given us to each other in the human family. Thank you for being with us in all our joys and sorrows, for your comfort in our sadness, your companionship in our loneliness. Thank you for yesterday, today, tomorrow and for the whole of our lives. Thank you for friends, for health and for grace. May we live this and every day conscious of all that has been given to us.

 

From The Catholic Prayer Book, compiled by Msgr. Michael Buckley.

 

 

Prayer at Harvest and Thanksgiving

 

O God, source and giver of all things,
You manifest your infinite majesty, power and goodness
In the earth about us:
We give you honor and glory.
For the sun and the rain,
For the manifold fruits of our fields:
For the increase of our herds and flocks,
We thank you.
For the enrichment of our souls with divine grace,
We are grateful.

Supreme Lord of the harvest,
Graciously accept us and the fruits of our toil,
In union with Jesus, your Son,
As atonement for our sins,
For the growth of your Church,
For peace and love in our homes,
And for salvation for all.
We pray through Christ our Lord. Amen.

 

From Living God’s Justice: Reflections and Prayers, compiled by The Roundtable Association of Diocesan Social Action Directors
 

 

Prayer of Thanksgiving

 

Walter Rauschenbusch

O God, we thank you for this earth, our home;
For the wide sky and the blessed sun,
For the salt sea and the running water,
For the everlasting hills
And the never-resting winds,
For trees and the common grass underfoot.
We thank you for our senses
By which we hear the songs of birds,
And see the splendor of the summer fields,
And taste of the autumn fruits,
And rejoice in the feel of the snow,
And smell the breath of the spring.
Grant us a heart wide open to all this beauty;
And save our souls from being so blind
That we pass unseeing
When even the common thornbush
Is aflame with your glory,
O God our creator,
Who lives and reigns for ever and ever.

 

From Living God’s Justice: Reflections and Prayers, compiled by The Roundtable Association of Diocesan Social Action Directors
 

Thanksgiving Prayer

 

This Thanksgiving let those of us who have much and those who have little gather at the welcoming table of the Lord. At this blessed feast, may rich and poor alike remember that we are called to serve on another and to walk together in God's gracious world. With thankful hearts we praise our God who like a loving parent denies us no good thing.

 

From Songs of Our Hearts, Meditations of Our Souls: Prayers for Black Catholics, edited by Cecilia A. Moor, Ph.D., C. Vanessa White, D.Min., and Paul M. Marshall, S.M.

Madonna Statue Survives the Storm in Breezy Point

Mark Lennihan/Associated Press

The following excerpt is from NY Times.com:

By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN

Where the McNulty home once stood on the corner of Oceanside and Gotham, a few blocks from the Atlantic Ocean on the spit of land in Queens called Breezy Point, there now remains a charred, twisted ruin. Flooding and fire have left behind nothing but the foundation. Within it are strewed a dislodged bathtub, an air-conditioner casing battered into a helix shape, a mailbox coated with ashes.

As if all that loss were not loss enough, the storm spared a few tormenting reminders of life before its arrival. In the scorched shell of a cedar closet, screen windows stand neatly stacked. Three rolls of paper towels sit on a pantry shelf, toasted as delicately brown as cookout marshmallows.
      

So, yes, at the corner of Oceanside Avenue and Gotham Walk, the house inherited by the elderly McNultys’ niece Regina after the couple died, is a place of tragedy. It is also, astonishingly, a place of faith. For the one part of the home to survive intact was a statue of the Virgin Mary that Mary McNulty placed in her garden years ago.

      

The statue is one of the only recognizable remnants of the swath of Breezy Point where more than 100 homes burned to the ground while a flood kept firefighters from reaching it. Since the waters withdrew early on Oct. 30, the image of the Breezy Point Madonna has reached the nation, indeed the world, through vivid news photos. Pilgrims have come to leave offerings: a bouquet of yellow roses, four quarters, a votive candle, a memorial card for the victims of Sept. 11, a written admonition that healing begins with acceptance.

       

Ellen Mathis Kail knelt at the shrine five days after the catastrophe. She had spent 30 summers on Breezy Point and watched her parents save for decades to buy a bungalow on Gotham Walk. She had been married in the parish church, St. Thomas More, a few blocks away.

 

Read More: Breezy Point, NY

Image of Virgin Mary Appears on Window at Sime Darby Medical Centre

'Virgin Mary window' to be moved from Malaysian hospital - CathNews

The following excerpt is from CathNews.com:

The window pane at a Malaysian hospital that throngs of Catholics believe has an image resembling the Virgin Mary will be moved to a church, reports AFP on PerthNow.

Hundreds of Catholics have gathered in prayer and worship at the Sime Darby Medical Centre (SDMC) just outside the capital Kuala Lumpur since last week after seeing the image on one of the windows.

Reverend Simon Labrooy, the priest of nearby St. Thomas More Parish, said in a statement that the hospital's management in a meeting with him had agreed to give the glass panel to the Catholic Church.

He said the panel would be moved to another church outside Kuala Lumpur, Marian Church of Our Lady of Lourdes Klang, "which will be more conducive for prayer and reflection".

Read More: Virgin Mary Image

Dominican Publications Releases Nov/Dec 2012 Issue of Spirituality Journal

Spirituality Journal - Vol.18, No. 105

 
Spirituality Journal

Dominican Publications has released the November/December 2012 issue of their Spirituality Journal with a photograph by Loci B. Lenar. The image reproduced is a stained glass window of St. John of the Cross, photographed in Summit, New Jersey. The Catholic journal is published in Dublin, Ireland.



St. John of the Cross - Stained Glass Window
Photograph by Loci B. Lenar



The following excerpt is from the Dominican Publications website:

Dominican Publications was founded in April 1897. They publish many books and also bring out four journals - Doctrine and Life (ten times a year), Religious Life Review (six times a year), Scripture in Church, with Guide for Readers (both four times a year), and Spirituality (six times a year).

Their Book publishing is in line with the interests of the Journals, the main focus being on Homiletics, the Bible and Liturgical aids, current theological problems, comment on political and social issues from a Catholic viewpoint, Spirituality, biography, Church documents and Religious Life.



November/December 2012 Spiritulity Journal 


Order Journals or Books: Dominican Publications

A Tribute to Saint Kateri Tekakwitha

St. Kateri by Stephn B. Whatley

Artist Stephen B. Whatley - Flickr Photo Sharing!

Mr. Whatley is a talented artist who paints with brillant and colorful strokes of the brush which captivates the viewer. The artist resides in the UK and is recognized internationally for his Christian tributes. The following story about St. Kateri and the new painting is published on his website.

Kateri Tekakwitha (USA, 1656-1680) was canonised in Rome on October 21, 2012 as the first Native American Saint - and on that special day, expressionist artist Stephen B Whatley painted this new tribute; inspired by an array of historic images - including the earliest painting of 1690.

Nancy Wiechec of the Catholic News Service in Washington DC kindly introduced Stephen to St. Kateri's story, in August 2012, through an eloquent feature she had written - and the artist was immediately inspired, enchanted and moved; especially through his great affection for the USA and its people.

Painting iconic tributes to his Catholic faith often on special anniversaries has become a powerful feature of Stephen's work; and he was determined to honour this most humble of Saints - who was rejected by her tribe, through her devotion to her Catholic faith and fled from her native Fonda, NY home to Montreal, Canada.

Miracles of healing through the intercession of St Kateri have been experienced as recently as 2006 which finally convinced the Vatican to recognise her as a Saint; despite the fact that Native Americans have been appealing for this recognition since the 1800s.

A memorial Shrine to Kateri was established in 1938 in Fonda, NY; 200 acres of beautiful woodlands on the north bank of the Mohawk River.

In 1980, Kateri was beatified as the Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha; the first stage toward Sainthood; which has finally come about - bringing joy peace and hope to Americans, Canadians and Catholics worldwide.

Saint Kateri Tekakwitha is known as the patron Saint of American Indians, ecology and the environment.

News of the Canonisation of Kateri Tekakwitha, via BBC News:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19996957

Saint Kateri Tekakwitha
October 21, 2012 by Stephen B Whatley
Oil on canvas, 27 x 19.5in/68.6 x 50cm
www.stephenbwhatley.com