'All shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well' Bl.Julian of Norwich
Make of me a house of prayer,
With doors wide open
To the visitation of Your Saints,
That being, in my small capacity,
Prophet, priest and king,
By virtue of Your sacred anointing,
I may set my table,
And feast upon You
In holy communion,
Listening for Your Presence
On the lips of Your Holy Ones,
To grow and go from glory to glory
As You o Lord intended as
You formed me in the womb
For Your good pleasure
And my eternal benefit.
Copyright 2013 Joann Nelander
All rights reserved
This came to me via email, Just had to pass this on:|
An atheist was seated next to a little girl on an airplane and he turned
To her and said, "Do you want to talk? Flights go quicker if you strike
Up a conversation with your fellow passenger."The little girl, who had just started to read her book, replied to the total
... Stranger, "What would you want to talk about?""Oh, I don't know," said the atheist. "How about why there is no God,
Or no Heaven or Hell, or no life after death?" as he smiled smugly."Okay," she said. "Those could be interesting topics but let me ask
You a question first. A horse, a cow, and a deer all eat the same
Stuff - grass. Yet a deer excretes little pellets, while a cow turns
Out a flat patty, but a horse produces clumps. Why do you suppose that is?"The atheist, visibly surprised by the little girl's intelligence,
Thinks about it and says, "Hmmm, I have no idea." To which
The little girl replies, "Do you really feel qualified to discuss
God, Heaven and Hell, or life after death, when you don't know shit?"And then she went back to reading her book.
From a letter by Saint Peter Claver, priest
To preach the Gospel to the poor, to heal the broken-hearted, to proclaim pardon to captivesYesterday, May 30, 1627, on the feast of the Most Holy Trinity, numerous blacks, brought from the rivers of Africa, disembarked from a large ship. Carrying two baskets of oranges, lemons, sweet biscuits, and I know not what else, we hurried toward them. When we approached their quarters, we thought we were entering another Guinea. We had to force our way through the crowd until we reached the sick. Large numbers of the sick were lying on the wet ground or rather in puddles of mud. To prevent excessive dampness, someone had thought of building up a mound with a mixture of tiles and broken pieces of bricks. This, then, was their couch, a very uncomfortable one not only for that reason, but especially because they were naked, without any clothing to protect them.
We laid aside our cloaks, therefore, and brought from a warehouse whatever was handy to build a platform. In that way we covered a space to which we at last transferred the sick, by forcing a passage through bands of slaves. Then we divided the sick into two groups: one group my companion approached with an interpreter, while I addressed the other group. There were two blacks, nearer death than life, already cold, whose pulse could scarcely be detected. With the help of a tile we pulled some live coals together and placed them in the middle near the dying men. Into this fire we tossed aromatics. Of these we had two wallets full, and we used them all up on this occasion. Then, using our own cloaks, for they had nothing of this sort, and to ask the owners for others would have been a waste of words, we provided for them a smoke treatment, by which they seemed to recover their warmth and the breath of life. The joy in their eyes as they looked at us was something to see.
This was how we spoke to them, not with words but with our hands and our actions. And in fact, convinced as they were that they had been brought here to be eaten, any other language would have proved utterly useless. Then we sat, or rather knelt, beside them and bathed their faces and bodies with wine. We made every effort to encourage them with friendly gestures and displayed in their presence the emotions which somehow naturally tend to hearten the sick.After this we began an elementary instruction about baptism, that is, the wonderful effects of the sacrament on body and soul. When by their answers to our questions they showed they had sufficiently understood this, we went on to a more extensive instruction, namely, about the one God, who rewards and punishes each one according to his merit, and the rest. We asked them to make an act of contrition and to manifest their detestation of their sins. Finally, when they appeared sufficiently prepared, we declared to them the mysteries of the Trinity, the Incarnation and the Passion. Showing them Christ fastened to the cross, as he is depicted on the baptismal font on which streams of blood flow down from his wounds, we led them in reciting an act of contrition in their own language.
