You Should Wear a Miraculous Medal!

I have worn a Miraculous Medal since my Aunt Mary gave me one on the occasion of my Confirmation!  I have a couple of other posts about this beautiful tradition here and here.  The following comes from the Canterbury Tales site:

When I was still Protestant, I remember reading St Ephrem the Syrian. I was amazed by how often he spoke of the Mother of Christ and how much he praised her in his poetic hymnody. Ephrem was a Syrian Christian living from AD 306 – 373. He is early and he undoubtedly teaches that Mary was without stain, unlike other humans. He is probably the earliest and most explicit Patristic witness to the dogma of the Immaculate Conception.

As a Protestant, I got it. I was never really bothered by the fact that Mary would be sinless. In fact, it made sense to me. I was suspect of the doctrine simply because Paul said that "all had sinned" but I could see how the doctrine could be preserved and read in context.

I also learned about the Miraculous Medal - which is a small medal that commentaries the Immaculate Conception. It's really called the Medal of Immaculate Conception, but so many miracles have been worked through it that it is now simply calledthe Miraculous Medal. Wearing it is a sign that you are particularly devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary as the Immaculate Mother and Enemy of Satan. 

Here's the story about the medal and why you should wear it:

On July 18, 1830, Saint Catherine Labouré awoke hearing a voice of a child calling her to the chapel located in the Rue du Bac, Paris. The Blessed Virgin Mary said to her, "God wishes to charge you with a mission. You will be contradicted, but do not fear; you will have the grace to do what is necessary. Tell your spiritual director all that passes within you. Times are evil in France and in the world."

Catherine reported that the Blessed Mother returned during evening meditations. She displayed herself inside an oval frame, standing upon a globe, wearing many rings of different colors, most of which shone rays of light over the globe. Around the margin of the frame appeared the French words Ô Marie, conçue sans péché, priez pour nous qui avons recours à vous (O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee). 

As Catherine watched, the frame seemed to rotate, showing a circle of twelve stars, a large letter M surmounted by a cross, and the stylized Sacred Heart of Jesus crowned with thorns and Immaculate Heart of Mary pierced with a sword. Asked why some of her rings did not shed light, Mary reportedly replied, "Those are the graces for which people forget to ask." Catherine then heard Mary ask her to take these images to her father confessor, telling him that they should be put on medallions, and saying "All who wear them will receive great graces."

One of the most remarkable facts recorded in connection with the Miraculous Medal is the conversion of a Jew, Marie-Alphonse Ratisbonne of Strasburg, who had resisted the appeals of a friend to enter the Church. Alphonse Ratisbonne consented, somewhat reluctantly, to wear the medal, and being in Rome, he entered, by chance, the church of Sant'Andrea delle Fratte and beheld in a vision the Blessed Virgin Mary exactly as she is represented on the medal; his conversion speedily followed.

If you're still not convinced, listen to this powerful sermon on the Miraculous Medal and share it with your friends:On the Miraculous Medal (mp3). On a scale from one to ten, I give this sermon a ten. Please listen to it.

Rector Major Fr. Angel Fernandez, SDB: Our biggest challenge is to stay loyal to God

G. K. Chesterton: "Our Father is younger than we"

“Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, "Do it again"; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, "Do it again" to the sun; and every evening, "Do it again" to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.” 
                                                                                      ― G.K. Chesterton

Archbishop Sheen on Suffering

Pope Francis: We're not Christian without the Church

In his Thursday morning Mass, Pope Francis talked about the identity of Christians. He said one cannot understand a Christian outside of the people of God. Being Christian, he explained is not about being alone, but instead about being part of a Church. 

POPE FRANCIS

"Our Christian identity is belonging to a people: The Church.  Without this, we are not Christians. We entered the Church through Baptism: there we become Christians.”

To understand Jesus, he explained, one must first  understand history. That's why he called on Christians to pray for the grace of memory.

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux's Parents and Vocational Discernment

The following comes from Shameless Popery:

I've finally gotten around to reading St. Thérèse of Lisieux's autobiography, The Story of a Soul. It's a great read, but one of the things that fascinated me was actually from the introduction, which gave some background on Thérèse's family.

Thérèse's parents were holy, and wanted to give their entire lives to God.  When they were younger, each of them had pursued the religious life, going so far as to apply to particular orders. Thérèse's mother, Zélie Guérin, applied to the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, while Thérèse's father, Louis Martin, applied to the Augustinian Monastery of the Great St Bernard.  Both of them were rejected.

Zélie ended up becoming a lacemaker, while Louis became a watchmaker.  Externally, this would seem to be something of a failure -- making lace and watches seems to have little to do with bringing glory to God, particularly in comparison with being a monk or a nun.  Eventually, in 1858, Zélie and Louis met, fell in love, and three months later, married.  At first, the two did not consummate the marriage - they wanted a spiritual marriage, living as brother and sister in a non-sexual relationship.  After nine months, at the insistence of their confessor, the marriage was finally consummated.

In all, Louis and Zélie gave birth to nine children.  Three of them died in infancy, and a fourth at the age of five.  This left five children, all daughters: Marie, Pauline, Léonie, Céline, and the baby of the family, Thérèse.  Prior to Thérèse's fourth birthday, her mother, Zélie, died of breast cancer, leaving Louis to raise the four girls.  Each of them would go on to become nuns, and Thérèse, of course, went on to become the 33rd Doctor of the Church.

I think that the lives of Zélie and Louis help illustrate the mysterious way in which marriage and family are intertwined with celibacy and the religious life. The Catechism remarks on this in CCC 1620, which says:

Both the sacrament of Matrimony and virginity for the Kingdom of God come from the Lord himself. It is he who gives them meaning and grants them the grace which is indispensable for living them out in conformity with his will. (Cf. Mt 19:3-12.)Esteem of virginity for the sake of the kingdom (Cf. LG 42; PC 12; OT 10.)and the Christian understanding of marriage are inseparable, and they reinforce each other:

“Whoever denigrates marriage also diminishes the glory of virginity. Whoever praises it makes virginity more admirable and resplendent. What appears good only in comparison with evil would not be truly good. The most excellent good is something even better than what is admitted to be good.” (St. John Chrysostom, De virg. 10,1:PG 48,540; Cf. John Paul II, FC 16.)

Marriage is an amazing good, for the benefit of man, and for the glory of God. Celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom of God is an even superior good. But the greatest good is to do the will of God. For Louis and Zélie, this meant the married life.  And through marriage and family, they accomplished much more than they likely would have as a simple nun and monk: together, they gave the world one of the greatest Saints of all time.

In discussing vocations, it's helpful to speak of the primary vocation and secondary vocation.  The primary vocation is simple.  You're called to be a Saint.  Doesn't matter who you are, what your strengths or weaknesses are, or what your state of life is.  God designed you to know, love, and serve Him, and to enjoy eternity with Him.  That's what sanctity is.  The secondary vocation, whether you're called to be a priest, monk, nun, father, mother, or a single man or woman, flows out of the first: it's the way that you're called to live out your primary vocation.  Louis and Zélie didn't end up with the secondary vocations that either of them anticipated for themselves.  But by staying loyal to God throughout, they lived out inspiring and holy lives, and raised a saintly family.  The Church recognized this, not only in canonizing their daughter, and declaring her a Doctor of the Church, but in beatifying Louis and Zélie themselves.

Love is our mission: The family fully alive

The following comes from Archbishop Chaput:

Earlier this week, I had the pleasure of making public Pope Francis’ theme for next year’s World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia:  Love is our mission: the family fully alive. The theme was inspired by the words of the early Church Father, St. Irenaeus, who said that “the glory of God is man fully alive.” In like manner, the glory of men and women is their capacity to love as God loves. And rarely can that love be lived out more intimately and fruitfully than in the family. 

As we begin the “heavy lifting” to prepare for the World Meeting of Families and a possible papal visit, it’s a good moment to pause and reflect.

Every moment of every day, a mother and father are teaching and guiding each other and their children, while witnessing about their love to the world beyond their home. The structure of marriage — if lived faithfully — naturally points a man and woman outwardtoward the world, as well as inward toward one another and their children. As Augustine once said: “To be faithful in little things is a big thing.”

Simply by living their vocation, a husband and wife become the most important living cell of society. Marriage is the foundation and guarantee of the family. And the family is the foundation and guarantee of society.

It’s within the intimate community of the family that a son knows he is loved and has value.  In observing her parents, a daughter first learns basic values like loyalty, honesty and selfless concern for others, which build up the character of the wider society. Truth is always most persuasive, not when we read about it in a book or hear about it in a classroom, but when we see it incarnated in the actions of our parents.

Marriage and family safeguard our most basic sense of community, because within the family, the child grows up in a web of tightly connected rights and responsibilities to other people. It also protects our individual identity, because it surrounds the child with a mantle of privacy and personal devotion. Most of the laws concerning marriage in our culture were originally developed precisely to protect family members from the selfishness and lack of love so common in wider society.

The family is the human person’s single most important sanctuary from mistaken models of love, misguided notions of sexual relationships and destructive ideas about self‑fulfillment. All these painful things, unchecked, can be a centrifugal force pulling families apart.

Love is a counter-force. Love is the glue both for family and society. This is why love is the fundamental mission of the family. It’s why the family must be a sanctuary of love. We most easily understand love when we, ourselves, are the fruit of our parents’ tenderness. We most easily believe in fidelity when we see it modeled by our father and mother.

Read the rest here.