In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. I’d Like to welcome you to our Perseverance Family Conversation, top of the morning! That God would bless you and very special way as we prepare to celebrate the Feast of Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit.
We’d like to start off our conversation by inviting Mary to be with us. Mary has many titles, among which would be Mary is the Mother of God; Mary, the Mother of the Church; and Mary is the mother of each and every one of us. Let’s turn to Mary. In the Hail Holy Queen we invoke Mary as also our life, our sweetness and our hope. Ask Mary to obtained for us and outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Let us pray the prayer that she loves most, and that’s the Hail Mary.
Together: Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee blessed are thou among women and blessed the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
My name is Father Ed Broom, and I’m an Oblate of the Virgin Mary, your host and. We would like also to invite our Spiritual Director to be with us. Our Spiritual director is the Holy Spirit. Like the Blessed Virgin Mary, Holy Spirit has many wonderful titles. His titles are the following: The Holy Spirit is known as the Gift of gifts. The Holy Spirit is also known as the Sweet Guest of our soul. Holy Spirit is known as our Counselor as well as their Consoler. Holy Spirit is also known as the Sanctifier. If we truly want to pursue a life of holiness, and we have to rely upon the inner workings of the Holy Spirit and our collaboration with him. Holy Spirit is also our Interior Master. Saint Paul reminds us, “We don’t know how to praise we ought but the Holy Spirit intercedes with ineffable groans, so we can say “Abba, Father”, which means daddy or Father.
Let us beg the Holy Spirit to give us a lot of light and our intellect and the fire of divine love to burn within our hearts as we say the classical prayer to the Holy Spirit. Together: “Come Holy Spirit fill the hearts of your faith and enkindle within us the fire of your divine love, send forth O God, who did instruct the hearts of your faithful by the light of the Holy Spirit, grant us that by the same spirit, we may be truly wise and ever rejoice in his consolation, through the same Christ our Lord, Amen. Glory be to the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. Our Lady Fatima, pray for us. Saint Joseph, pray for us. Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us. St. Gabriel, pray for us. All God’s angels and saints, pray for us. St Ignatius of Loyola, pray for us. Saint Rita of Cascia, pray for us. St. Faustina Kowalska, pray for us. In the name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen.
A after praying together, the family that prays together stays together. I like off your words of consolation. I promise to pray for you in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass In the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass we celebrate the greatest prayer in the whole universe. It is the prayer par excellence. It unites heaven to earth and earth to heaven by the Blood of Jesus who suffering on the cross. I’d like to place these intentions on the altar.
INTENTIONS
First, I’d like to pray that all of us would be open to the inner workings of the Holy Spirit and His inspirations. Perhaps this can be a prayer, especially this week. Come, Holy Spirit, come. Come, Holy Spirit, come through the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
My second intention? Like the pray especially for our families, that we would be converted by the workings of the Holy Spirit and we would grow in grace and that we would be sanctified by the Holy Spirit. And that we would persevere to the end and be saved. Jesus says: “what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and lose his soul in the process”
THIRD INTENTION. I’d like to pray for the dying. Many will be dying during the course of this day, that they will be saved. That they will turn to the infinite mercy of Christ. The greatest sinners can be the greatest saints of they simply entrust themselves to God’s infinite mercy. Give thanks to the Lord for your God for his mercy, for his mercy endures forever.
MARIAN REFLECTION
My friends, we’re still in the month of May. I’d like to give a brief Marian reflection before entering into our topic for the day. Today I’d like to just give a brief reflection on Mary and her relationship to the Blessed Trinity and to the Church. Mary has an intimately relationship to the Blessed Trinity. Mary is the daughter of the Eternal Father, Mary’s the Mother of God the Son, and Mary is the Mystical Spouse of the Holy Spirit. Mary had a very intimate relationship with the Blessed Trinity. Mary also is the living temple of the Blessed Trinity.
We become sons and daughters of God through baptism, or adopted sons and daughters of God through baptism. We’re brothers and sisters to Jesus Christ. We become temples of the Holy Spirit through baptism. So, let’s ask Mary to help us to appreciate more and more our union with God through baptisms. In the most complete way as we get closer and closer to the Feast of Pentecost.
ASCENSION OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST INTO HEAVEN
Yesterday we celebrated the ascension of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ into heaven. Now we’re with Mary and the Apostles in the Upper Room called the Cenacle. And we’re praying fervently with Mary for the down pouring of the Holy Spirit in their own lives that we would have her own Pentecostal experience. Come, Holy Spirit, come. Come through the heart of Mary!
SAINT RITA
Today we have the feast of a Saint Rita. We have Saint Paul going to Ephesus and preaching, converting and, laying his hands upon the people there. Then the Gospel of Saint John, Jesus says take courage in the midst of our tribulations because He has conquered the world.
I’d like to start off by talking about Saint Rita of Cassia. She was born in 1381 and died the 1400’s in her 70s. That church reminds us that the saints can help us in the following ways, the saints can pray for us. They are our friends! The Beatles sang “Get a little help from your friends”. We can get a help from our friends, and those friends are the Saints in heaven and their power of intercession for us. Most of the Saints, they are models for us to imitate in their lives of virtue. We should never forget that all of us are called to become Saints! As Jesus said, be holy as your heavenly Father is holy. So, let’s get to know the Saints.
Every year we celebrate on May 22nd, the feast of Saint Rita of Cassia. Some background: In the late 1300’s, early 1400’s her parents were somewhat like the parents of John the Baptist and in the sense that they could not have children. Her parents could not have children. Finally, in their old age, God bless him with their daughter, who they named Margarita. Yesterday I was taking a walk and praying rosaries with two Rita’s, today they celebrate their Onomastico. She was born of elderly parents, pious, and therefore elders. They’re living in time in Italy, whether it’s just a lot of they call the ‘dolce vendetta”. There are a lot of wars warring between families, it was part of the social fabric. She try to live the beatitude of the peacemakers. As a little child she just love to pray. Her parents arranged a marriage for her to Paolo Mancini. Rita simply obeyed her parents, she implemented the 4th commandment. According to the writings on her life, she married a man that had a lot of egregious character faults. It is certain sense you can see is a certain parallel between Saint Rita and Saint Monica. In this sense St. Rita and Saint Monica, they both married very, very difficult men. Rita’s husband was in very angry man with a very explosive temperament. He also had problems with drinking and he was a womanizer.
These are the qualities also of the husband of Saint Monica, whose name was Patricius. St. Rita patiently put up with these egregious temperamental faults of her husband. God blessed her and her husband with two children, two boys. The boys followed in the footsteps of their father in their violent temperament. She prays very fervently for the conversion of her husband. and apparently, he was converted. But something happened that would change the life of Rita, as well as her whole family. She found that her husband. Was brutally murdered. Now with this, her two sons recognize that the honor of their family was severely damaged. The sons were planning to seek out revenge and to kill the person that killed their father. Rita prefer the death of her sons rather than they carry out this dastardly deed. Rita spoke with the family that murdered her husband and begged and she gave forgiveness. And she tried also to speak with her own family members that they would practice mercy.
She trying to live out the gospel, “blessed are the peacemakers”. What happened was it affected the two sons of Rita and they became gravely ill. Saint Rita was helping to intercede for them and get them to repent. Such that both of the sons of Rita died. So Rita lost her husband, and one son, and then another son. She was bereft of all human attachments.
Rita had a desire within her heart to become religious nun. That was the desire of her heart. Rita had devotion to. Saint Augustine, St. Mary Magdalene and Saint Nicholas of Tolentino. Saint Nicholas of Tolentino was an Augustinian priest. With great devotion to praying especially for the souls in Purgatory. She begged these three Saints to intercede for her. As it happened, she was praying one day in front of the Augustinian convent and the gates of the convent opened of themselves. The Mother Superior saw this as a sign that she should allow this woman to enter into the convent. Back then, it was not the custom to allow older women who were widows to come in and become part of the religious life. Rita was accepted in. She was very humble, very obedient, very prayerful, very mortified and one of her greatest desires was to pray and the meditative upon the Passion of Christ. She was put to the test. One of the tests that they made her do was a humiliation. Sister, go out now in the garden and plant the stick and water it. Obviously, this was a huge humiliation. But Rita did that and to the surprise of the nuns in the convent the stick actually blossomed! Blossom into a flower!
Rita spent 40 years of her life in the convent of the Augustinian nuns for 40 years. Praying and offering sacrifices, excepting humiliations, helping out the poor. There’s something else happen in their life that’s worthy of note. Rita wanted to love Christ all the more and she wanted to participate in His passion and to console the suffering Christ. It was Good Friday, and she was praying in front of a crucifix, and all of a sudden Rita experienced a sharp pain under forehead. And this was this was a manifestation of the stigmata. You’ll probably know that St. Francis of Assisi as well as Padre Pio had the stigmata. They had the wounds in their hands and in their feet, and they had also on his opened side. But there are various forms of the stigmata.
In the case of Saint Rita, it was her brow, her forehead was pierced with thorns and this, of course, caused her excruciating pains. And not only that, but it emitted a terrible stench and even worms would come out of that wound. But she patiently endured it! The latter part of her life, the last few years of her life she became very sick. And was confined to bed that she could barely move.
She suffered so very much but Rita was always offering her suffering to God. I believe that’s a very powerful message for us. That we have to suffer, let’s pray that we don’t waste our suffering. That’s all for our day to Jesus, who Mary and through the angels and the Saints. Not to waste our suffering, but to unite our suffering to Christ. Suffering can be spiritual, emotional, physical and familiar. There are many, many ways that we suffer. One of the biggest tragedies is the fact that we can so easily waste our sufferings.
So let’s learn to unite our sufferings to the sufferings of Christ, past, present, and future. Father Solanus Casey would actually thank God for the future crosses that God would send him. Father Salonus is Casey who was the porter of Saint Bonaventure in Detroit, MI? Who was the Spiritual Director of my great uncle in Detroit, MI about 80 years ago.
Rita spends the last part of her life on the cross, confined to bed. She’ll eventually die in 1457,. and like Christ goes to the cross always, and only through love, always, said the words of Saint Pope John Paul II. So the fact that she embraced the cross, she embraced suffering that was the means by which she was able to do so much good. Especially as a peacemaker. But a few other things, miracles that happened during her life in an afterlife. When she was about to die, someone came to visit her and said what can I give you? And it was in the winter, and the Saint Rita said, I want you to go in the garden and I want you to get me a flower. And this person was thinking, well, in the winter, you’re not going to get any flowers in the middle of winter. So her friend went there and she saw a flower in full bloom and brought the flower to Rita.
Another one asked her. What would you like? I don’t know if you’ve ever done this, but the Italian figs are among the most delicious fruits. She asked, can you give me a couple of figs? And also was the time in which the fig tree was not in blossom? And what did they find? Figs. The fig tree? Another one I just learned yesterday I was listening to a YouTube and Saint Rita in preparation for my talk today and there was a Carpenter that heard about Rita and he admired her very much but he was basically paralyzed confined to bed, could barely move. This, Carpenter said, I would love to make a coffin in which Rita would be able to rest for all eternity. As he made this petition, immediately he was healed of this paralysis and the people were shocked! They saw this man who was paralyzed up and running and after that, this man actually made the coffin for Saint Rita and her body was placed in that coffin.
Another note about Saint Rita, her body! Her body is incorrupt! One day you might get a hold of the book by Joan Carroll, The Incorruptibles. There are some Saints that are incorrupt. God allows that to happen. That would be St. Jacinta of Fatima, Padre Pio, One of the most fascinating incorrupt would be listen to this Saint Anthony of Padua. That’s right. Say, Anthony Padua. Who lived at the time of Saint Francis and the 1200s, hje died in his 30s St. Anthony of Padua was known to be one of the greatest preachers in the Catholic Church. So much so. Did you know in the Hammer of Heritics! You with thunder against those who work
