My Only Love - Matt Maher

HT @RCYouthWorker

I know your heart and it is good, and I love you.

A Heart Full of Gratitude

My heart is full of gratitude this Mother's Day weekend.  I was able to go to a Conference for Women last night and today.  What a blessing!  I almost did not go, but am so thankful that we were able to slog through all the obstacles and I was able to go.  Wow.   Thank you to my husband for being a good husband and father and for God giving me the peace of mind to know that our kids are in good hands with their dad.

If you are planning to go spend some time with God without distraction, there will be obstacles.  Don't let the doubt or discouragement or mountains of tasks keep you away from Him.  Just do it.  Of course, He is with you wherever you are, but to be with Him without distraction is a gift.  And a necessity if you want to grow in relationship with Jesus.  God is good and He always blesses these times away with Him with great healing and Love.

Thank You Lord for the retreat center staff and for the priests who shepherd us.  Your Love O Lord is evident in all of their work and care to provide for us and our spiritual growth.  Thank You Lord for our Bishop and his care for his flock.  May Your Love guide him and all the priests of our diocese.  Thank You Lord for placing my husband and I here in this place at this time.  In Your Holy Name, Amen.

Holding the Finding of the True Cross in My Heart

This year, my patron saint is St. Helen. From Father Mark at Vultus Christi, in his post Finding the Cross in Paschaltide:

The Feast of the Finding of the Holy Cross Although the Feast of the Finding (or Invention) of the Holy Cross on 3 May was removed from more recent liturgical books, it remains in the 1934 edition of the Benedictine Antiphonale that is still widely used, and continues to be celebrated in not a few Benedictine monasteries. While the Office is substantially the same as on 14 September (The Exaltation of the Holy Cross), on 3 May it is shot through and through with alleluias. It presents a vision of the Passion and Cross of the Lord in the light of the Resurrection. Theologically, mystically, and catechetically the Feast of the Finding of the Holy Cross on 3 May is a liturgical piece of genius.

The feast commemorates Saint Helena's finding of the Cross in Jerusalem, and the signs and wonders that accompanied it and verified its authenticity. Saint Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine, carried part of the Cross back to Rome, where it was enshrined in the Basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, on the site of the Sessorian palace.

The entire Mass and Office of the Finding of the Holy Cross deserve to be meditated and held in the heart. The liturgical texts of the feast demonstrate and support that, far from being inappropriate during Paschaltide, the contemplation and celebration of the mysteries of the Lord's Passion and Cross emerge, in the light of these fifty days of jubilation, as an inexhaustible wellspring of healing and of hope.

With joy we keep the feast of the Finding of the Cross, whose light shineth over all the world, alleluia. (Antiphon at Matins)