Author Archives: monks4christ

Immaculate Heart of Mary . Saturday

“Mary, give me your Heart: so beautiful, so pure, so immaculate; your Heart so full of love and humility that I may be able to receive Jesus in the Bread of Life and love Him as you love Him and serve Him in the distressing guise of the poor.” – Saint Teresa of Calcutta

“Be Not Afraid; my Immaculate Heart will be your refuge and your safe passage to God.”
– Our Lady of Fatima

“Sacrifice yourselves for sinners and say many times, especially when you make some sacrifice: ‘O Jesus, it is for Thy love, for the conversion of sinners and in reparation for sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.” – Our Lady of Fatima

“If you put all the love of the mothers into one heart it still would not equal the love of the Heart of Mary for her children.” – Saint Louis de Montfort

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Father’s Day . This Sunday

Reflections on Father’s Day
by Fr Boniface Hicks OSB

Rod Dreher proposed “The Benedict Option” as a way to move forward in our challenging times. He described how the Rule of Saint Benedict provides the culture-changing wisdom that could create a leaven to transform our world from the ground up. In my own reflections, it seems to me that Saint Benedict actually promotes “The Joseph Option.” His wisdom for monasteries helps them to become another Nazareth where we live the lives of Mary and Joseph always in the presence of Jesus. In Nazareth, the Gospel principles were lived out in such an unremarkable way that the locals were shocked when Jesus declared himself to be the Messiah (cf. Luke 4). And yet the Gospel principles were lived out in such a powerful way that God himself was always fully present, and it became the starting place of a new creation.

We can see the connections of Benedict and Nazareth in several ways. A Benedictine monastery is founded on the vow of stability so that the collective holiness from living out God’s will steadily permeates the place and it becomes an oasis of peace for visitors. I like to imagine that Nazareth was quite a peaceful place to visit and that the Holy Family was a wonderful model of hospitality in the decades they dwelt there. In a Benedictine monastery, the keynote is found in chapter 19 of the Rule: “We believe that the divine presence is everywhere . . .” and the orientation of everything in the monastery fosters greater awareness of that fact. In Nazareth, Mary and Joseph helped each other remember that their little boy was the Incarnate Word of God and they did everything in the divine presence. Saint Benedict described the monastery as a “school for the Lord’s service” (RB Prologue 45) and Pope Saint Paul VI described Nazareth as “the school in which we begin to understand the life of Jesus. It is the school of the Gospel” (Homily 5 January 1964 in Nazareth).

At Saint Vincent, we have another Nazareth where countless people have come in the last 175 years to enter into the divine presence. In the peace that comes from the first moments on the grounds to encounters with the various residents and finding a high point in the Basilica and the liturgy, hearts are changed, love grows, the Gospel is internalized and our world is improved a little bit at a time. It is providential that the Year of Saint Joseph coincides with our 175th anniversary. As we approach Father’s Day let us invoke our fathers Saint Joseph and Saint Benedict to help us foster another Nazareth and bring Jesus more tangibly into our world, so that “in all things God may be glorified!” (Rule 57:9; based on 1 Peter 4:11).

Image by Portraits of Saints

the Most Sacred Heart . Solemnity on Friday

Amazingly, in gazing upon the Sacred Heart of Jesus, we are looking at the hidden center of God.  What do we find there?  Burning love! Crucified love! A love that never says, “Enough!” and that stays with us to the very end and takes beyond the end into an eternal embrace. It is a love that “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Cor 13:7) – IMF Ministry

Novena to the Sacred Heart of Jesus

I. O my Jesus, you have said: ‘Truly I say to you, ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you. ‘ Behold I knock, I seek and ask for the grace of…… (here name your request) Our Father… . Hail Mary… . Glory Be to the Father… .

Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in you.

II. O my Jesus, you have said: ‘Truly I say to you, if you ask anything of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. ‘ Behold, in your name, I ask the Father for the grace of…… . (here name your request) Our Father… Hail Mary… . Glory Be To the Father… .

Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in you.

III. O my Jesus, you have said: ‘Truly I say to you, heaven and earth will pass away but my words will not pass away. ‘ Encouraged by your infallible words I now ask for the grace of… . . (here name your request) Our Father… . Hail Mary… . Glory Be to the Father…

Sacred Heart of Jesus, I place all my trust in you.

O Sacred Heart of Jesus, for whom it is impossible not to have compassion on the afflicted, have pity on us miserable sinners and grant us the grace which we ask of you, through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary, your tender Mother and ours.

Say the Hail, Holy Queen and add: St. Joseph, foster father of Jesus, pray for us. — St. Margaret Mary Alacoque

Padre Pio recited this novena

From EWTN.com