The 40 Days For Life is starting September 26th! I strongly encourage you to be a part of this. If you have never heard of this, it's where people go to pray in front of Planned Parenthood every day from seven in the morning to seven in the evening for forty days.

Please give of your time to help save lives and come to pray for the endangered unborn and an end to abortion.

 Abortion is America's holocaust. We need to fight for an end to the unjustified deaths of these little ones. Please pray that the leaders of our country will make the right decisions concerning our unalienable right to life.

Here is the address for the Planned Parenthood in Evansville:
125 N. Weinbach #120
Evansville, Indiana 47711

Even if you can't go and stand in front of the building to pray, you can pray on your own and be united in prayer with people all over the nation who will be praying with you for the same cause. Please pray. Abortion needs to stop. Each person can help change this injustice.

"A nation that kills its own children is a nation without hope." -Pope John Paul II

Please help bring hope back to our country. Pray abortion to end now and be a part of this national campaign.

For more information, go to www.40daysforlife.com.

            

OUR LADY OF LA SALETTE

 On September 19, 1846, at about three o'clock in the afternoon, Mary appeared to two children in the small town of La Salette, France.

Fifteen-year-old Mélanie and eleven-year-old Maximin were tending their cows when they saw a "beautiful lady" surrounded with light, sitting on a stone and crying. She wore a crucifix on a chain around her neck. Two tools of crucifixion were attached to the horizontal beam of the cross - on one side a hammer and the other pliers they would use to pull out the nails.

She talked to them in French and in their town's dialect. She gave them a message "to deliver to all her people." As she told them the message, she continued her crying and warned them, "If my people do not obey, I shall be compelled to loose my Son's arm. It is so heavy I can no longer restrain it. How long have I suffered for you! If my Son is not to abandon you, I am obliged to entreat Him without ceasing. But you take no heed of that. No matter how well you pray in the future, no matter how well you act, you will never be able to make up to me what I have endured on your behalf. I have given you six days to work. The seventh I have reserved for myself, yet no one will give it to me. This is what causes the weight of my Son's arm to be so crushing. The cart drivers cannot swear without bringing in my Son's name. These are the two things which make my son's arm so heavy."

She also spoke of future punishments for these sins,

including crop blights and famine.

She asked the two if they said their prayers often, and they honestly replied that they hardly prayed. She told them to say their morning and night prayers at the very least. Then she continued, saying,  "Only a few rather old women go to Mass in the summer. Everyone else works every Sunday all summer long. And in the winter, when they don't know what else to do, they go to Mass only to scoff at religion. During Lent, they go to the butcher shops like dogs."

 She encouraged the children to pray regularly, and she told them because of divine mercy, there was hope for the people who wanted to amend their lives.

She told them to inform everyone about her message. But then she gave the children two secrets in which they were to tell no one, but eventually, the secrets were made known to Pope Pius IX. 

This is an approved apparition of the Catholic Church. It began its approval by the local Bishop in 1851. 

At St. Joseph's Holy Family First Saturday Devotions on September 1st, a seminarian gave a beautiful talk about Our Lady of La Salette. Seminarians will continue to give talks on other Approved Marian Apparitions, so please come October 6th to hear about another Apparition of Mary!

September 18th is the feast day for Saint Joseph of Copertino (Cupertino in Spanish). If you would like to learn about a very awesome saint who did some pretty crazy stuff, well, this saint is your man.

I won't give you a whole biography on this saint because his whole life was long, beautiful, and inspiring. This is a really long list of some of the facts of his life, but it's just beyond belief (and truly wonderful) what God has done through this man. 

Here they are:

• He was born June 18, 1603, in Italy with the name of Joseph Mary
• His parents were almost imprisoned when his father's debtors failed him, so his very pregnant mother fled to a friend's house and when she didn't get there in time she gave birth to him in a stable. (Sound like anyone you know?)
• His mind was always on things not of this world.
• Not intellectually gifted and very clumsy, he was not accepted with the Capuchin brothers.
• To much surprise, he was eventually received into the Provincial Chapter at Altamura.
•  By sheer miracle, he became a priest since he wasn't very learned and knowledgeable about the priesthood.
• His first mass was celebrated with many tears of joy.
• He went very much out of his way to suffer for Christ, by abstaining from all food except herbs (some that caused the others to be very nauseous for many days after), by sleeping on boards and straw, by cutting down on his sleep to pray, and by scourging himself (his cell was sprinkled with blood).
•  Anything pertaining to God would make him lose control of his senses and he would fall into a trance-like state (during this state, the friars performed tests like pricking him with needles, burning him, and hitting him with iron, but they could never pull him out of the trances).
• On many, many occasions, he was seen to be levitating (while he was saying mass even) and flying through the air.
• He rebuked a hawk for killing a finch he had taught to say "Jesus and Mary" and "Father Joseph, say your Breviary". He struck the hawk, and it did not fly away until he gave it the admonition to never do such a thing again.
• He told some hares to stay away from a certain place, for there were hunters lying in wait. The rabbits listened and lived, thanks to the saint's protection.
• He presented a white lamb to watch over everyone in church. It wouldn't make a noise, but it would awake the sleepy parishioners by jostling them gently.
• God gave him the gifts of infused knowledge, reading of hearts (consciences), reading of minds, visions, prophecy, miracles, perfume, and bilocation.
• He knew if someone was licentious because he strongly smelled the stench they gave off.
• Many theologians talked with him and said, "My conversations with Father Joseph have been of greater use to me than many years of study."
• When a man was dying, Joseph appeared to him even though Joseph was many miles away from the man.
• He brought back to life a whole herd of sheep who had been killed during a hailstorm.
• He accurately predicted the death of two popes.
• He preferred to do the lowliest tasks, and he wanted to be insulted and despised.
• People traveled from all over to see him and he was extremely popular, but he said, "I know not why these people come to see me for I am but an ignorant man and a poor sinner."
• He spent the last six years of his life seeing no one but his Bishop and a doctor.
• He suffered many Satanic attacks, but they didn't bother him. He said, "I do not fear his attacks, for I am with God and far from the world."
• He died at the age of sixty.

Today, a great Christian musician was born forty-two years ago. His name is Mark Schultz, and he has sung and written many beautiful, moving songs that bring you closer to God.

One of my favorite songs by him is Broken and Beautiful. It makes you think about how we are all weak and we all need God's love and grace. And it doesn't matter how much we have sinned and all that we've been through. God's love and mercy is always there for us. So we should run to Him not only when our lives are perfect and beautiful, but especially when we are hurting and broken.

Don't be afraid to go to church when your life is falling apart. Immerse yourself in God's mercy through the sacrament of Reconciliation. It's intensely beautiful especially when you're broken. 

The Catholic Church is not a museum for saints. 

It's a hospital for sinners.

Here are the lyrics to Mark Schultz's wonderful song 

Broken and Beautiful:

There's a businessman / There's a widowed wife / There's a smiling face with a shattered life / There's a teenage girl with a choice to make / It's crowded here in church today / And the preacher says as the sermon ends / Please close your eyes and bow your heads / Is there anyone in need of prayer / Jesus wants to meet you here / 'cause we all fall short / We all have sinned / But when you let / God's grace break in

Chorus: It's beautiful / Beautiful / Come as you are / Surrender your heart / Broken and beautiful
Well he'd never been to church before / But he came today as a last resort / His world was crashing in / And he was suffocating in his sin

But tears ran down / As hope rushed in / He closed his eyes / Raised his hands / Worshiping the God who can / Bring him back to life again
Cause there's nothing more beautiful to God / Than when his sons and daughters come / Broken / Alleluia / Alleluia / Come as you are

If you would like to listen to this song, here's the link to a 

YouTube video of it:  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpbdK0q-FyY

 

EPHPHATHA: be opened.

This is the word that Jesus says in the gospel today.
Ephphatha. Be opened.

I don't know about you, but I can barely even say the word by sounding it out. 

The word itself is hard to pronounce, and I think it's also hard to do what the word means - "be opened".  

It's not easy to be opened to Jesus and to let Him into our lives. It's hard to share our thoughts, our dreams, our hopes, our feelings. But Jesus wants more than that. He wants everything. He wants to be a part of every aspect of our lives.

Something that helps me to be open to Christ is knowing that He wants the best for us and He wants it more than we do. Whatever He gives us may not be exactly what we want, but it's always exactly what we need.

Being open to others about Jesus and His love for is also difficult. It's tough to be open about our faith and to open our mouths to spread the Word of God. It's kind of scary now in this world we live in to even pray in public or have a conversation about God.

So there's something to work on this week - to try to be more open about our faith and the good news of Jesus Christ as well as trying to be more opened to Christ and what He wants to give us.

 

Two hundred and twenty years ago today, on September 2, 1792, was the beginning of what became known as the "September Massacres". This happened in France during the French Revolution. Considered one of the bloodiest events in the history of France, this horrible massacre lasted for only three days.

The September Massacres were a way for the revolutionaries of France to not only strike out against those whom they felt had wronged them, but also as a means for them to make a show of force against the advancing Prussian army. The mobs of the September Massacres sought to kill as many of the political prisoners that were being held in Paris as possible before the Prussians could arrive and possibly free them. Though the initial attack on the prison transfer had specific targets in mind, the murderous revolutionaries that made up the mobs put no thought into guilt or innocence when they made their attacks. The assaults on other prisons were to show the Prussians know how dangerous the people of France really were.

The mob killed over two hundred priests and three bishops. The massacres occurred during a time of rising resentment against the Roman Catholic Church, which eventually led to the temporary dechristianization of France.

One-hundred and ninety-one September Massacre martyrs were beatified by Pope Pius XI in 1926. Long after the names of their executioners have been forgotten, their heroism in the defense of the Papacy and the Catholic faith will be remembered.