Our Lady's Lamp

My Desire Totus Tuus - Totally Yours. This, more than anything, is what I desired of my life. One of my first posts, a year and a half ago, was about how God shaped my heart to desire His Glory . God has since changed my desire. Anyone can give glory to someone - think of the soldiers that gave great glory to conquerors like Alexander the Great, the Roman Empire, or the Champions that fought in the place of the king to settle disputes. Achilles was one of the great Greek glories.... but he despised the rulers. You can bring glory to someone you don't necessarily love. And I realized that I didn't just want to serve God - I wanted to love  Him. I didn't just want to be His soldier. I wanted to be His bride, His lover. This was a distinction I did not make until after I graduated college and had time to sit and stop being a Martha and start being a Mary. After graduation, I had almost 8 months of no job, so I spent lots of time in the Adoration Chapel, sitting as t...

Mary is known and called by many titles: Mary, Mother of God, Our Lady of Guadalupe, Our Lady of Sorrows, Our Lady of Fatima, Our Lady of Grace, Our Lady, Our Lady of the Rosary, the New Eve, Queen of Heaven, Queen of the Angels, Comforter of the Afflicted, Mary Most Holy, Blessed Virgin, even just Mother (to name a few). However, when I was in at church, the priest teaching, while praying, asked for Mary's intercession under a title I had heard once or twice before, but I had never really thought of: "Seat of Wisdom." As I pondered this title, I realized that it is intrinsically tied to one of my favorite titles for Mary: Theotokos - the God Bearer or Mother of God. Now, some of my friends are likely curling their teeth back at this, so I say, please, read on. I shall explain. The first recorded use of this title dates to the third century in Egypt, and much controversy erupted over this because the Egyptians called Isis the Mother of God. They proposed a compromise ...

"My Lord and My God!" It's an entreaty, words of adoration, a cry of the heart. But first, it is a title - a name. The first time it is used in the New Testament is when Thomas - Doubting Thomas - drops to his knees before Jesus and recognizes the pierced man before him not just as his Teacher, nt just as the Christ, not just as the Son of God but as "My Lord and My God!" Thomas is usually best known for his refusal to accept Christ's resurrection based on the testimony of all his friends and fellow disciples. He says he has to see proof - the wounds that killed Him. He has a week to ponder their testimony, and then Jesus comes, and instead of saying just "I believe it's you!" He instead becomes a vessel through which the Spirit reveals more about Jesus and becomes a source of revelation, of clarification, of insight: He cries out "My Lord and My God." No longer is Jesus just this Teacher, just their Rabbi, just the Messiah and So...

Yesterday, it seems, was the day for weddings. A couple at my church were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary (pray for them and for all married couples!) and I got to witness two of my dear friends, Ashley and Israel, marry each other. It was beautiful. And yes, I cried - like a baby! One of the things I loved about their wedding was that Ashley and Israel decided not to change the gospel from what the gospel of the day was. Instead of finding something like the Wedding at Cana or a "Love one another as I have loved you" or something like that, they kept the reading for the feast of the day: The Annunciation. (Since the 25th of March fell in Holy Week, the feast was moved to the Saturday after Easter). For their wedding, they chose to have the wedding of God the Spirit and a mortal woman read. This, I think, was absolutely beautiful. Think about it. An Angel comes as an emissary and tells a young girl that the God of the Universe wishes her to bear His Child and b...

You know what one of the amazing things about God is? Even though He has a Glorious Throne in Heaven, though He has countless souls who are much holier than I, though He has the angels who can actually see Him in all of His Glory, He still wants to come to me. He desires that my heart be a throne for Him. My heart is unworthy. It's little, in has the splinters of sin, and yet, my Jesus, the God who created the world, who breathed life into me wants to come and be enthroned on my little splintered chair.   I was pondering this at mass tonight, and, you know, it was humbling. Not just that He would want to come to little ol' me, but because I really have nothing much to offer Him. My heart is tiny compared to this world, but it is where Jesus wants to dwell. Despite it's littleness, He cherishes the haven only I can offer. He wants to, as St. Therese reminds us, "find another heaven, the heaven of our soul in which He loves to dwell." He doesn't mind that ...

For the third year in a row, I have watched The Passion of the Christ on Good Friday. For the third year in a row, I have cried like a baby. But I think I cried harder this time than any other time I watched it. Looking back, I can see little signs of how God has begun to prepare me for last night, but little could prepare me for the stark understanding of the truth that flooded my heart as all the little things culminated in the viewing of that movie. Jesus has been using Mary to teach me about the Annunciation (post in progress!) and about the beautiful mystery it was, and I have been drawn more and more to songs by Kelly Pease and Danielle Rose  from Mary's point of view, to a deeper understanding of how His whole life led to calvary and how painful that road would been, especially for those dearest and closest to Him. LAst year, I expected to walk the sorrowful road with Mary, but instead walked with John and Magdalene . This year, I walked both with and beside Mary and l...

This is a transcription from my journal from tonight.  As I sit outside in the Rosary Garden tonight, Holy Thursday, I am reminded of Christ's Agony. That is where His Passion started, not before Pilate. Full aware of the horrors about to come, He prayed. And he begged His dearest friends to pray with Him. But they had just eaten a good meal, and they were tired and ready for bed So, they kept dozing off, and Jesus begged them to remain awake, not just for His sake, though I imagine He greatly desired their company and support. When they did not give it, an Angel came and ministered to Him, but it was not the same. Today, tonight, Jesus sits on the eve of His passion in the garden. He will not die again tomorrow, but daily, He offers Himself to the Father on our behalf, and daily He offers Himself for us - to  us . His agony is not that of being flayed to an inch of His life then beaten, bruised, crucified, and mocked. Instead, His agony is watching us commit the sins ...

The heart is the part of the body that is responsible for spreading life to every other part. Without the heart pumping blood, no other part can survive. It is also the part of the body the soul is personified as. "Heart" implies totality, the core of essense, and so much more. It is the life and love giving portion of the body. If one offers his heart to a person, he is offering everything to that person - his love, his emotions, his sufferings, his joys, his weaknesses, his strengths, and the promise that as long as that heart still beats, he will be true to that person. Every beat of our Lord's Sacred Heart was for us. He only took a physical heart for us, and from the moment in started beating, every beat was for us. The heart beating in the body of the infant Lord is the same heart that beat in the chest of our crucified Lord. It beat for one reason and one purpose - a love for us so deep that he would cover us all with his blood. This love consumed his heart...

Today, we in America celebrate the Solemnity of the Ascension of the Lord (the technical feast day was Thursday). Jesus, our Risen Lord, takes his body up to the Father so it can be glorified for all time as the Lamb that was slain upon the altar of Heaven, forever offering himself as restitution for our sins, forever allowing the blood from his hands, his feet, and his heart, wash the sinner's sins away and allowing his earthly body and heavenly spirit nourish and strengthen his body the Church. Forever, this Lamb sends forth the Spirit to those of us still living upon the earth. You might think it's strange to think of our Risen Lord as a slain lamb, and I did too, until I began listening to an amazing CD by Scott Hahn (Title: Understanding the Eucharist), and he talked about Revelation 5 - a chapter I had never really paid much attention to in a book I used only for references (not a great way to use any book of the Bible, much less this most beautiful one that deserves...

Before Jesus walked that painful road to Calvary, Jesus' body was subjected to scourging. This was not what was required by the Jews, yet he suffered it. He allowed his precious body not just to suffer a painful, humiliating death, but he allowed that perfect flesh to be shredded by a cruel whip. That blood which erased our sins, of which one drop was enough to save the whole world, was spilled from gashes torn into his body. Oh, Jesus , how can I ever praise you enough for the sacrifice you made for me. You allowed your precious body to be mutilated. Men who did not believe in you were allowed to take a harsh whip to your back and rip it open. This was not something the Jews called for, but you knew that this was necessary. Your back was already tender from the agony you experienced in the garden. Your ordeal left your whole body as though it was bruised, so each bite of the whip was even more painful. But you never cried out for the Father to take away this pain. You never b...

March 25, nine months before December 25, is the Feast of the Assumption. Christ did not begin his time on earth as a human at Christmas but when he entered the womb of Mary. It was then that “the Word became Flesh” (John 1:14), for life does not start at birth but at conception. One of the great geniuses of the way the Church Calender is set up is that this falls just before Passion week and Easter. To truly understand the upcoming events, the life, suffering, death, and resurrection of our Lord, we must understand – at least in part – the Incarnation. This was prophesied by Isaiah and heralded by an angel (Luke 2:26-38). God, the creator of all things, of the world, the animals, the plants, the angels, and us humans, to redeem us from our own sins and failures, left his glory and took up his residence in the womb of a young girl. This would have been very poignant to the Jews. For the first time since the losing of the Ark, the physical presence of God was with them. Without...

A daughter of the King, that is what I am. By the grace of the Holy Trinity, I am a princess in the court of God. I have been adopted by the merits of Christ's blood and the Holy Spirit. I was taken from my former life as a child of the world and given a heavenly inheritance! But what does it mean to be a daughter (or son) of God, the King of kings? What does it mean to be a princess of the heavenly court? What do our roles and relationships look like? God is Our Father God, the Creator of all, has adopted me. This means that I share in the inheritance of the kingdom of God. No longer and I just little me, human, weak, dirty, unworthy of the courts of Heaven. Heaven is my inheritance – as long as I remain a true daughter (reference the Prodigal Son). When I was a child, I would follow my dad everywhere, look at whatever textbook he was reading, ask endless questions of “why?” “what's that?” and “how?” and any variation therein. I would ask him for anything; I let him kn...