Ordination Anniversaries

We have received some gracious emails asking for special prayers for specific priests and deacons who are celebrating anniversaries during the Marian Month of May. I have listed their names in the side bar under our Wife and Mother Patroness - Blessed Anna Maria Taigi.

If you would be so kind as to go over and view their names and offer a special prayer to Our Heavenly Mother Mary for them I'm sure they would be very grateful.

Priests Anniversaries:

19th May, 2010.

Fr. John Rizzo, FSSP: 25th Anniversary.

22nd May, 2010.

• Fr. Ken Webb, FSSP 6th Anniversary.

Ordinations to the Sacred Priesthood:

28th May 2010.

Friar John Derrick Yap, OFM
Friar William Lee, OFM
Friar Just Lim, OFM

22nd May

Rev. Peter Bauknecht, FSSP

Rev. Simon Harkins, FSSP

Rev. Garrick Huang, FSSP

Rev. Rhone Lillard, FSSP

Rev. John Rickert, FSSP

Rev. John Shannon, FSSP

Please pray for these priests and deacons at the foot of the Altar of Our Lord.

O Jesus, Eternal Priest;

keep all Your priests within the shelter of Your

Sacred Heart, where none may harm them.

Keep unstained their anointed hands

which daily touch Your Sacred Body.

Keep unsullied their lips purpled with Your Precious Blood.

Keep pure and unearthly their hearts sealed with the

sublime marks of Your glorious priesthood.

Let Your holy love surround them and shield them

from the world's contagion.

Bless their labours with abundant fruit,

and may the souls to whom they have ministered to

be their joy and consolation

and in Heaven their beautiful and everlasting crown.

O Mary, Queen of the clergy, pray for us;

obtain for us many holy priests.

Amen.

Merry, Mary, Month of May!

“May the Mother of Jesus and our Mother, always smile on your spirit, obtaining for it, from her Most Holy Son, every heavenly blessing.”

-Saint Padre Pio-

Connection between Saints and their Mothers.

This is a very inspiring article that is exciting news for any mother praying for a vocation to the priesthood within from her family.

Rome, Italy, Mar 5, 2010 (CNA/EWTN News).- Italian historians are taking interest in the role mothers in transmitting faith to their sons. Referring to the examples of St. Jean Vianney, Popes Pius X and Paul VI, the Vatican newspaper suggests that this relationship is fundamental to religious vocations.

According to an article published in the Vatican paper L'Osservatore Romano (LOR), historians at a recent conference in Modena, Italy commented on the need to study the relationship that ties the man of faith to his mother. In studying biographies, they asserted that faith is almost always transmitted to a man by his mother.

LOR indicates that while research into this relationship can be useful in "reconstructing biographical events of public personalities, it assumes a deeper and almost essential significance" if one looks at the emergence and maturation of a religious vocation.

St. Jean Vianney, the Cure of Ars and patron of priests, spoke of this relationship often, telling his parishioners "virtue passes from the heart of the mother to the heart of the children," the Vatican newspaper noted.

In the book Mothers of Saints, by Albina Henrion, the prayerfulness of the Cure of Ars is attributed to the influence of St. Jean's mother who created an atmosphere of prayer that "he almost breathed in his family life."

The saint said about his gift of prayer, "After God, it is the work of my mother," and added that children "voluntarily do what they see done."

In the book, the story of his mother's great charity throughout her life is told as well as her encouragement of young Jean's vocation and how she convinced the boy's father to allow him receive religious instruction. Although she did not live to see him ordained, he carried her example on through the "inexhaustible and charitable exercise of his ministry," reported LOR.

Another example offered by the Vatican newspaper was Saint Pius X, whose mother, Margherita Sanson, raised him and numerous brothers and sisters. She taught them to pray first thing in the morning, communicate with God throughout the day in Mass and Scripture reading, and to end each day with prayer, bringing the family together for an open examination of conscience. After describing this tradition, a friend of the family said, "is it any wonder that a holy soul came out of there?"

Following her son's episcopal ordination and placement in Mantova, the future Pope Pius X visited his mother to thank her. After kissing his episcopal ring, she showed him her wedding ring and said, "Your ring is very beautiful, Giuseppe, but you wouldn't have it if I didn't have this."

Margherita lived to see her son become the Patriarch (Archbishop) of Venice.

The final example presented by LOR was that of Pope Paul VI, who talked of an "unpayable debt of gratitude to his mother." To her, he said, "I owe my sense of concentration, of interior life, of the meditation which is prayer, the prayer that is meditation. Her entire life was a gift."

After the deaths of his parents, he said, "To the love of my father and of my mother, to their union I owe my love of God and love of man."

Paul VI, indicates LOR, offered a further insight, saying, "We, they tell us, all live more or less from that which a woman has taught us in the sublime dimension. And boys feel it more than girls, because of nature... priest-sons even more strongly, because they are consecrated to solitude."

God, grant that one of my sons may become a priest!

I myself want to live as a good Christian

and want to guide my children always to do what is right,

 so that I may receive the grace, O God, to be allowed to give you a holy priest! 

Amen

Priests in Focus on the Fatima Day 13th May

Today's Priests in Focus is a little different, due mainly to the fact that my computer has completely crashed and at this stage we cannot access any files at all. So I am working off my mother's laptop with no Priests in Focus widget or Paint shop pro program to add the priests for the week.

I had in fact, received a special request for prayers for a dedicated and devote young priest whose ordination anniversary falls on the first of the Our Lady of Fatima days for the year ~ the 13th of May. This priest, Fr Dan Doctor is celebrating his 4th anniversary and so I ask for prayers for this fine young priest in this week to come.

So due to the unusual circumstances that I find myself in, I have decided to dedicate this week's Priest in Focus to Fr Doctor alone. May God bless him with many fruitful years of priestly ministry.

Make Mary's Month of May Meaningful - Say Thanks

Double click image to enlarge.

May 4th: Feast day of Blessed Marie-Leonie Paradis - A Life of Dedication to the Priesthood.

My son (7) and I were looking up who's feast day it was today in the Saints for Young Readers for Every Day Vol 1 book and I discovered that it was Blessed Marie-Leonie Paradis's feast day. She was a nun who founded a religious order devoted to the priesthood particularly within their household care and supporting priests in their educational work.
Here are some details I discovered about this humble saintly nun:

Elodie Paradis was a very young entrant into the world of a religious sister, entering as a novice at 13/14 years of age and taking her final vows at the young age of 17 in the order of The Sisters of the Holy Cross.
Her father after leaving the family in the small village of L'Acadie in Quebec Canada to try and find wealth in the Gold Fields in California was not happy on his return to find his Elodie had joined the convent. He went to the convent and begged her to return home with him but she decided to stay. He eventually accepted her decision and was resigned for God take his daughter as His bride.
She eventually started a new religious order inspired by Martha in the Gospel, The Congregation of the Little Sisters of the Holy Family, a community dedicated to serving the clergy.

Martha and Mary with Jesus

(Father, your Son honoured St. Martha by coming to her home as a guest. By her prayers may we serve Christ in our brothers and sisters and be welcomed by you into heaven, our true home. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.)

I came across this blog today by Father Anthony Ho while searching for information on Blessed Marie-Leonie Paradis, here is an excerpt from his article:

"In this Year for Priests it is very appropriate to recall Blessed Marie Leonie’s special love for priests.

  Little Sisters of the Holy Family

Blessed Marie Leonie was born in 1840. At the age of 13 she joined the Holy Cross Sisters. After serving as a teacher for 20 years she was entrusted with domestic work at St. Joseph’s College in New Brunswick.

Believing in the dignity and greatness of the priesthood, Blessed Marie Leonie decided to dedicate her life to the service of priests through humble domestic work. Many young women were willing to join her, so in 1880 Blessed Marie Leonie decided to form a new religious community to serve priests: The Little Sisters of the Holy Family.
The sisters were involved mainly in domestic work. They worked in kitchens, laundries, and sacristies of colleges, seminaries, rectories, and bishops’ residences. Later on the Sisters also started to serve priests as secretaries, receptionists, and accountants. They imitated the example of the holy women in the Gospel who ministered to Jesus and the apostles as they travelled throughout Galilee and Judea.

The Holy Women from the Gospel

One of the sisters summed up their spirituality and evangelical mission as follows:

“Our God is the Eucharistic God, our principle work is charity, our mission is service to the priesthood exclusively, our spirit is the spirit of the Holy Family of Nazareth, our motto is ‘piety and dedication,’ and our duty is to accomplish more than others.”

By their service, the Little Sisters bear witness to the dignity and greatness of the holy priesthood. It is the hope of the sisters that, by their fidelity and faith in the priesthood, priests themselves will be inspired and encouraged to remain faithful to their promises and their mission.

Blessed Marie Leonie died on May 3, 1912. Hers was the first beatification ceremony on Canadian soil."

Pope John Paul II beatification Sister Marie-Léonie Paradis, here is an excerpt from his homily at Jarry Park, Montreal on 11 September 1984:

"Today, to this living record of the saints and the blessed which has been in this land for centuries, a new name is being added, that of Sister Marie-Léonie Paradis.

This woman is one of you, humble among the humble, and today she takes her place among those whom God has lifted up to glory. I am happy that for the first time, this beatification is taking place in Canada, her homeland.

Born of simple, poor and virtuous parents, she soon grasped the beauty of religious life and committed herself to it through her vows with the Marist Order of the Holy Cross. She never once questioned that gift to God, not even during the difficult periods of community life in New York and in Indiana. When she was appointed to serve in a college in Memramcook in Acadia, the richness of her religious life drew young women to her who also wanted to dedicate their life, to God. With them and thanks to the understanding of Bishop Larocque of Sherbrooke, she founded the Congregation of the Little Sisters of the Holy Family which is still thriving and is still very much appreciated.

Never doubting her call, she often asked: "Lord, show me your ways", so that she would know the concrete form of her service in the Church. She found and proposed to her spiritual daughters a special kind of commitment: the service of educational institutions, seminaries and priests' homes. She never shied away from the various forms of manual work which is the lot of so many people today and which held a special place in the Holy Family and in the life of Jesus of Nazareth himself. It is there that she saw the will of God for her life. It was in carrying out these tasks that she found God. In the sacrifices which were required and which she offered in love, she experienced a profound joy and peace. She knew that she was one with Christ's fundamental attitude: he had "come not to be served, but to serve". She was filled with the greatness of the eucharist and with the greatness of the priesthood at the service of the eucharist. That is one of the secrets of her spiritual motivation.

Yes, God looked upon the holiness of his humble servant, Marie-Leonie, who had been inspired by Mary's openness and receptivity. And henceforth, from age to age, her Congregation and the Church will call her blessed (cf. Lk 1, 4-8)".

Prayer for Priests and Religious

O Jesus, our great High Priest, hear my humble prayers on behalf of your servants. Give them a deep faith, a bright and firm hope, and a burning love which will ever increase in the course of their life. In their loneliness, comfort them. In their sorrows, strengthen them. In their frustrations, point out to them that it is through suffering that the soul is purified, and show them that they are needed by the Church; they are needed by souls; they are needed for the work of redemption.

O Loving Mother Mary, Mother of Priests and religious, take to your heart your children who are close to you because of the power which they have received to carry on the work of Christ in a world which needs them so much. Be their comfort, be their joy, be their strength, and especially help them to live and to defend the ideals of consecrated celibacy.

Amen

New Priests in Focus for the Week

Every Thursday we change the three priests names for the Weekly Priests in Focus. Though this week, we have done it a little differently, praying for all the monks from Abbaye Sainte-Madeleine, Le Barroux.

We are encouraging ladies to offer an Ave for the priests mentioned when visiting our site (You will see the above widget in the top righthand sidebar under our header) and also may wish to off an Ave for these priests any other time in the week that you may remember.

Of course you may also want to offer more than the Ave's, you may want to offer other prayers and sacrifices during the week for these particular priests, whatever you feel called to do, is a blessing.

This week's priests are:

Rev Dom Louis-Marie de Geyer d'Orth OSB Abbot

and the monks of Abbaye Sainte-Madeleine, Le Barroux

A list of the priests we have prayed for individually here are in the right hand sidebar down the bottom.

If you have any priests you wish to nominate to be added to the Priests in Focus please email us and we would more than happy to add that priest to our list.

Our Lady, Queen of the Apostles, bless us with holy, courageous priests!

Something to look forward to.

Sorry ladies for our dormancy for the last couple of months. We truly appreciate the concerns and contact that some of you have made wondering how we are. We are both very well but have had to sideline our passion and devotion to this blog to spend time in our first and primary vocations as wives and mothers.

I wanted to share with you a recent initiative through Catholics Come Home for the Year of the Priest:

EncouragePriests.org:

 "Our mission is to encourage priests, and promote priestly vocations through our love and prayers".

They launch on Father’s Day 20th June so please keep this on your calendars and take a look and support this new website.

Our priests now more than ever need our unfailing love and support; with all the secular media persecution, and scandal we can only hope that this purification will have some beautiful fruit in many saints to come.

All our priest need prayers but none at present more than our Beloved pope, Pope Benedict XVI. May God and His Holy mother give him strength, peace and heroic perseverance. We are so blessed as Catholics to have such a generous father in our Pope, he radiates love and compassion in every expression may he be held up in the loving arms of St Joseph patron of the Universal Church during this difficult time.

Prayer for Pope Benedict XVI

Lord, source of eternal life and truth,

give to Your shepherd, Benedict, a spirit

of courage and right judgment, a spirit

of knowledge and love. By governing

with fidelity those entrusted to his care,

may he, as successor to the Apostle

Peter and Vicar of Christ, build Your

Church into a sacrament of unity, love

and peace for all the world.

Amen.

 Let us pray for Benedict, the Pope.

R/ May the Lord preserve him, give him a long life, make him blessed upon the earth, and not hand him over to the power of his enemies.

 May Your hand be upon your holy servant.

R/ And upon Your Son, Whom You have anointed.

Our Father … Hail Mary … Glory Be …

Hedwig Kronsteiner, bringing forth 8 religious vocations

Photo from: Married Saints and Blesseds: Throughout the Centuries.

You may remember our posting a while back on the life of Eliza Vaughan - her story is in the compilation of stories from the Adoration, Reparation and Spiritual Motherhood booklet. She was an inspiring example of a mother of a large family who prayed daily for vocations and God rewarded her with six of her eight boys becoming priests and four of her five girls taking the veil.

I wanted to share a similar story of a family that was being raised with great sanctity a hundred years ago - the Kronsteiner family. Once again it is a story of a mother of a very large family and yet like Eliza Vaughan, Mother Kronsteiner made the time for an hour's prayer and Mass every day. From this Austrian family there were eight religious vocations from eleven children. To me, I see the direct fruits of daily Mass/adoration/mental prayer of a mother, planting within their own children the grace of a vocation to the religious life.

The Kronsteiner story comes from the book, Married Saints and Blesseds: Through the Centuries. (I highly recommend this book.) Hedwig and Ernst Kronsteiner were both holy parents but I want to focus on Hedwig and her spiritual life. One of their priest sons went on to write a book “Eine Metture und elf Kinder” (A Mother and her 11 children) it is in it’s fifth edition but unfortunately it is not in English.

Both Hedwig and Ernst came from anti-clerical, liberal families but despite this they both came to a deep realization of God and His goodness before they entered marriage. Hedwig impresses me deeply, she lived for God and her family, it never altered, she lived this until her last day on earth. Mental prayer was a fundamental part of her life and the fruits born from this all through her life are very evident. I will quote from the book:

“During the years of marriage that they spent together, the mother took the lead in religious matters, deliberately bringing her husband and children along with her into her world of faith and prayer. She led a life of prayer that was extraordinarily deep. Her prayer life followed a fixed order of an almost monastic sort; she not only said her daily prayers, as was her duty, but, despite her many chores, she recited her Rosary, spent an hour in meditation, and attended Holy Mass each and every day. Moreover, Mother Kronstiner knew very well how to turn the entire day, with its toils and worries, its work and its cares on behalf of a large family, into a prayer through a “good intention”, which she formulated as follows: “You have to do everything for the love of God; anything else is worth nothing!”

I think her words above reflect her generous time in mental prayer each day, understanding mental prayer to be conversing with God in love. The grace from her "conversation with God" flowed over to the rest of her 23hours in the day – “everything for the love of God, anything else is worth nothing!” The lifetime fruit of this mental prayer was eleven children, eight who were called to the religious life. Isn’t that astounding?

I’ll continue to quote again: “This mother raised her children with astonishing wisdom and generous freedom, in keeping, nonetheless, with the twofold principle: “The children don’t belong to me, they belong to God!”, and “Anything rather than a moral sin!”

Here are her eleven children:

Anna – Sister Cecilia of the Sisters of Saint Elizabeth, organist & choir director
Agnes – Sister Theresita of the Carmelite Monastery in Linz, cantor & organist
Hedwig – Sister Lucillia in the Missionary Congregation of the Holy Ghost Sisters.
Ernst – master clockmaker and director of a church choir.
Franz – Lay Brother in the Congregation of the Steyler Missionaries (working in Chile & Argentina)
Berthold – married, first a clockmaker then a policeman
Joseph – A priest in the diocese of Linz, a choirmaster and highly esteemed composer
Otto – married, a clockmaster as well as mayor for 15years of Losenstein.
Aloisia – Sister Elfriede of the Holy Ghost Sisters in Stockerau, organist
Hermann – priest of the diocese of Linz, professor of a music academy and composer.
Rudolf – he had entered the Benedictine Abbey in Seckau to become a monk but WW2 prevented him pursuing this vocation, missing in war.

And how did this faithful mother die? Her last words once again are a testimony to her faithfulness to mental prayer, as I quote for the last time:

“Hedwig Knonsteiner, got up early, at 4:00am, on April 19, 1940, as usual, and had her “conversation with God” in her customary one-hour morning meditation. At 7:00 am she took her missal to attend Mass, as usual, in the parish church in Losenstein and received Holy Communion, unaware that it was her Viaticum. (food for the journey) She spent the day as “Grandmother” in the company of her son Otto and his wife, Justina, and watching her little grandson Otto.

Around 8:00 pm she went with her husband – as she did every evening – into her bedroom to the family photo to bless her children and to pray for each of them. Then the husband and wife, as was their custom, each made the sign of the cross on the other’s forehead and prayed the prayer of consecration to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. After this, Frau Kronsteiner went again to the kitchen to make some final preparations. While there she had a fainting spell. After a time, her husband found her unconscious. They brought her to bed, called the doctor and the priest; the latter administered the Anointing of the Sick. At midnight, the courageous woman died in the peace of Christ, after managing to write down a sentence as a sort of testament: “Grant (O God) that I may love Thee always, and do with me what Thou wilt!”

Hedwig Kronsteiner, please pray for spiritual mothers, pray for vocations!

New Priests in Focus for the Week

Every Thursday we change the three priests names for the Weekly Priests in Focus. Though this week, we have done it a little differently, praying for all the monks from Abbaye Notre-Dame de Triors.

We are encouraging ladies to offer an Ave for the priests mentioned when visiting our site (You will see the above widget in the top righthand sidebar under our header) and also may wish to off an Ave for these priests any other time in the week that you may remember.

Of course you may also want to offer more than the Ave's, you may want to offer other prayers and sacrifices during the week for these particular priests, whatever you feel called to do, is a blessing.

This week's priests are:

Rev Dom Herve Courau OSB

Abbot and Monks from the Abbaye Notre-Dame de Triors

A list of the priests we have prayed for individually here are in the right hand sidebar down the bottom.

If you have any priests you wish to nominate to be added to the Priests in Focus please email us and we would more than happy to add that priest to our list.

Our Lady, Queen of the Apostles, bless us with holy, courageous priests!

New Priests in Focus for the Week

Every Thursday we change the three priests names for the Weekly Priests in Focus.

We are encouraging ladies to offer an Ave for the priests mentioned when visiting our site (You will see the above widget in the top righthand sidebar under our header) and also may wish to off an Ave for these priests any other time in the week that you may remember.

Of course you may also want to offer more than the Ave's, you may want to offer other prayers and sacrifices during the week for these particular priests, whatever you feel called to do, is a blessing.

This week's priests are:

Fr C Gardiner OFM, Fr L Hynes , Fr B McGrath

A list of the priests we have prayed for individually here are in the right hand sidebar down the bottom.

If you have any priests you wish to nominate to be added to the Priests in Focus please email us and we would more than happy to add that priest to our list.

Our Lady, Queen of the Apostles, bless us with holy, courageous priests!