Divine Mercy Sunday 2015 12th April Merciful Jesus Christ, I trust in you A Personal Story

I love the Divine Mercy Message and Devotion 24-7-365.

My Family and I have promoted the Divine Mercy Message and Devotion in Mumbai, India vigorously for more than 25 years.

We have spread the Divine Mercy Message and Devotion to Cities in Central India and in North India like Lucknow, Indore, and Patna to mention a few.

In 1994 and in 1995, we got in touch with Divine Mercy Information Centre, Hong Kong which was run by a Chinese Catholic Evangelist by the name of Mr John Bosco Wong. He was a Third Order Carmelite.

Mr John Bosco Wong sent my family tons of Divine Mercy Literature in 1996 and in 1997 meant for propagation in India.

We used to take literature with us to various Catholic Churches in Bandra West, a Suburb of Mumbai like Mount Carmel's Church, Saint Peter's Church, and Saint Andrew's Church to mention a few.

We used to distribute Divine Mercy Literature to Catholics explaining to them the significance of the Image of the Merciful Jesus Christ, the 3.00 Prayer, the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, and the Feast of Divine Mercy Sunday. This was done throughout 1996 and 1997 respectively.

My Parents were instrumental in getting the approval from Cardinal Ivan Dias of the Archdiocese of Mumbai in 1999 for Divine Mercy Sunday to be declared a "Church Feast" in the Archdiocese of Mumbai.

Our Objective in promoting this beautiful devotion was to make known the all encompassing love of Merciful Jesus Christ for suffering and sinful humanity.

AN OUTSTANDING MIRACLE OF DIVINE MERCY :

In January 1999, My Father was engaged in some masonry work on the terrace of the Bungalow where we live.

While doing some work on the terrace, he lost his balance and fell 25 feet to the ground. He miraculously survived this fall only because he used to promote the Divine Mercy Message and Devotion on his travels to various cities in India when he used to deliver continuous "Medical Education" Lectures. He is a Physician by Profession.

The fact that only a bone was injured in his right leg is an "Astounding Miracle" of the Divine Mercy in his life. Jesus Christ, the Divine Mercy protected him from serious harm and serious injury.

Now in 2015, We as a family are extremely happy to know that the Divine Mercy Message and Devotion is spreading like wildfire all across peninsular India and all across the world.

Let me conclude. Our Lord Jesus Christ asked Saint Faustina to see to it that the Feast of Divine Mercy be established on the First Sunday after Easter.

This would be a day of total forgiveness of sins for those who receive Holy Communion and go to Confession.

Happy Divine Mercy Sunday to one and all.

Note 1: Please check out an awesome and magnificent Website on Divine Mercy Sunday. please read it.

Divine Mercy Sunday

http://www.divinemercysunday.com/

Note 2 : Unceasingly pray the Chaplet of Divine Mercy and 3.00 Prayer for the salvation of souls.

The 3.00 Prayer

You expired Jesus Christ, but the source of life gushed forth for souls and the ocean of mercy opened up for the whole world. O Fount of Life, unfathomable Divine Mercy envelop the whole world and empty yourself out upon us.

O Blood and Water which gushed forth from the Heart of Jesus as a fount of mercy for us, I trust in You.

PERPETUAL EUCHARISTIC ADORATION AND SAINT POPE JOHN PAUL -2

Introduction:

On December 2, 1981 Saint Pope John Paul -2 began Perpetual Eucharistic Adoration with the Blessed Sacrament exposed in a Chapel at Saint Peter's in Rome and appealed to all Parishes to do the same.

He exhorted us to fill our Churches outside the timetable of Masses with hours of adoration and prolonged periods of Exposition as an expression of our personal commitment to our Eucharistic Lord and Saviour.

Jesus Christ himself points to the ways, the means, and the source of renewal when he says "Come to Me" for "I will refresh you" (Matthew 11:28). And again, "See I make all things new". striking is the fact that Jesus Christ did not whisper it, nor did he speak in a normal voice.

Rather, Sacred Scripture says that he "cried out" when he said :"If anyone thirsts, let him come to me. Let him drink who believes in me". Scripture has it "from within him rivers of living waters shall flow." (John 7 : 37-39)

The Blessed Sacrament is Jesus Christ living in our midst to fulfill a promise made long ago: "I myself will pasture my sheep. I myself will give them rest, says the Lord God. The Lost, I will seek out, the strayed I will bring back, the injured I will bind up, the sick I will heal". ( Ezekiel 34 : 14-16). The Blessed Sacrament is Jesus Christ, the God- Man sacred in his divinity, sacred in his humanity.

In his first encyclical letter "Redemptor Hominis" Saint Pope John Paul - 2 exhorted that "Every member of the church, specially Bishops and Priests must be vigilant in seeing that this "Sacrament of Love" shall be at the center of the life of the people of God, so that through all the manifestations of worship due to it, Christ shall be given back "Love for Love" and truly become the "life of our souls".


No Matter how  busy Saint Pope John Paul -2 was, or how many important people he had to see, he made sure he spent time with the most important person of all : "JESUS CHRIST IN THE BLESSED SACRAMENT".

Every Day, he used to spend 2 or 3 Hours in his eucharistic presence. and he used to tell the whole world that this was where he used to get all his energy to do so much for God and his people.

Conclusion :

Imagine the Pope inviting you to Rome to spend an hour with him : you  would feel like the most important person in the world. Who would not see this as a great honor and do anything to get there ??

Yet it is a much greater honor to spend an hour with Jesus Christ himself. Those who kept company with Jesus Christ in the Gospel stand out as men and women of great faith- they were his chosen friends who really believed in him.

They were ridiculed then, but are admired now. Those who keep company with Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament are his friends today who will stand out for all eternity for their faith in "His Real Presence".

Credits : Could you not watch one hour with me by Father Martin Lucia M.S.S.
               Newsletter No 10
               September 1998

Easter Sunday 2015 5thof April 2015

Dear Friends in Jesus and Mary,

Wishing all the readers of my blog a Blessed and Holy Easter 2015.

Feast of Saint Joseph 19th March 2015

When we think of Saint Joseph we normally think of a grey - bearded old man as depicted in many medieval paintings.

The Gospels say very little about Saint Joseph, only that he was a "Just Man". Joseph himself never speaks in the Gospel stories and so our knowledge of Saint Joseph is somewhat shrouded in silence.

Yet, it is this silence that gives the greatest witness to the type of man that Saint Joseph was. He was a humble carpenter who didn't draw attention to himself but fulfilled his daily duties to the best of his ability with tremendous faith in God - A Faith which required him to believe that his wife had conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and to take her into his Home !!

Declared Patron of the Universal Church, by Pope Pius, the Ninth in 1870, Saint Joseph has a universal importance that no other saint (except Our Lady) has.

The Church looks to Saint Joseph to help her in all her necessities. These needs are reflected by the titles which Saint Joseph has been given by the Church. He is Patron of Families, of the dying, of the sick, of workers, and of marriages.

How many of us have parents, children, or loved ones who need help in some of the above areas ?? God has chosen Saint Joseph to be a special intercessor for these most fundamental of human needs.

Saint Therese of Avila says this of Saint Joseph : " To other saints the Lord seems to have given grace to help us in one or other of our necessities, but of this glorious saint my experience is that he succours us in them all and that the Lord wishes to teach us that as he was himself subject to him on earth, in like manner in Heaven, He still does all he asks".

As Jesus Christ, has given us his Mother Mary to be our Mother, so also he has given us Saint Joseph to be our guardian, helper, and protector in all things.

Credits : Don Bosco's Madonna Mumbai
              March 2014
              Vol -15, No -11
              Saint Joseph
              Page 30


             

LENT - A TIME OF REDISCOVERY

For the Church, Lent like Advent is a "powerful season" a season of waiting and preparing and therefore a time for sacrifice, repentance, and purification. But, in our hedonistic society of today these words seem to strike a rather discordant note.

So, is it fair to ask : how do we speak today about sacrifice and how do we practice it ??

Lent lasts for 40 days - as many days as Jesus Christ spent in the desert before he took on his mission of salvation. 40 is a sacred number in the Bible : the Deluge lasted for 40 Days, Moses spent 40 days on Mount Sinai in the presence of the Lord, besides it was the temporal distance between the Resurrection and the Ascension.

It was for Forty Years that the Jews remained in the Desert before they entered the "Promised Land". It was the duration of the reign of Solomon. In fact, the number 40 appears innumerable times in the Bible.

In the past, when times were tough and people were pious and fervent the Church imposed strict rules about some things: penances even harsh ones like fasting and austerity.

For Example : The Bourgeois were supposed to abstain from meat and forego hunting as a sport reserved for the nobility. This saved them from gout and other diseases. Fishermen abstained from fishing allowing the replenishment of marine life and farmers in this season promoted the fertility of farm animals.

They were also forbidden from any forms of public entertainment; that was why people wore purple characteristic of the season of Lent.

Today, we are pampered tremendously, with just two days of fasting and abstinence (which are official).

We are allowed all the culinary delights we crave. How can we live like this in Lent and be spiritually alert at home with our families.

There could be moderation in what we eat, both as regards our choices ( holding back on certain things) for example fried and fast foods and buying only seasonal produce etc.

But there are things we can fast and abstain from that are both modern and necessary. Fasting from the noise, the noise of everyday life like the turned on T.V. and headphones at full volume, frivolous talk, gossip, verbal bullying that sometimes hurts more than physical assault in order to find silence in meditation and prayer.

To abstain from T.V. : fix a day in the week when you won't switch it on so that you may rediscover the joys of reading a good catholic book/christian classic or be able to have a heart- to - heart talk with a member of your family rather than looking at the T.V. Screen all the time.

You will rediscover the liberating feeling of a "Text Free" existence which allows you to discover that it is actually not necessary.

These "Disciplines" are not easy to obtain, but they serve to make us aware of what we have all become slaves to, leading us to a continuous hype and craving for gratification of one kind or another.

There is yet another problem: the media and secular society often present Catholic Christianity as the "religion of renunciation" but if properly understood it is a religion that offers us proposals for living a wholesome life.

Lent, therefore must not be celebrated as a time of "DEPRIVATION" but rather as a gesture of love and a time of rediscovery of yearning for personal growth and enrichment.

Here is an opportunity to retrieve oneself and "replenish" our empty selves.

Credits: Don Bosco's Madonna, Mumbai
             March 2012, Vol -13, No -11
             Lent, A Time of Rediscovery by Domenico Volpi
             Pages 8-9


             

Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes 11th of February 2015

The Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes is celebrated on the 11th of February.

On this important Feast Day, here are my thoughts:

AT LOURDES AS THE IMMACULATE-

The French Shrine of Lourdes is famous and known throughout the world. In this picturesque French Town which is at the foot of the Pyrenees, Our Lady appeared eighteen times to Saint Bernadette Soubirous in 1858.

Confirming the dogma proclaimed by Blessed Pope Pius, the Ninth four years earlier, the Mother of God spoke to the little visionary and presented herself as "The Immaculate Conception".

She was required to go to the River Gave to where the water miraculously gushed out in which millions of pilgrims bathe and are miraculously cured of many sicknesses as has been established by a rigorous Medical Centre.

Even at Lourdes, Our Lady left a Message. "Penance, Penance, Penance".

Don Bosco - that great Marian Saint of the nineteenth century told his boys of Valdocco of these miraculous events during the novena of the Immaculate Conception in the year 1858.

Therefore, while the world changed in the nineteenth century, Our Lady visited us.

She presented herself in splendid, matchless, and indescribable beauty as all the seers attested.

She understood that history could take an unfortunate twist and that people could forget God, misuse their freedom, causing very grave suffering, destruction, and death.

Is that not what is happening today ??

Rene Laurentin, a great Mariologist explains that Mother Mary, being the closest to Christ is in the communion of Saints, closest to the members of his Mystical Body, the Church.

For this reason, she visits us in order to help prevent irreparable disaster from destroying Christians in particular and the whole world in general.

She incessantly repeats, albeit in different words, what she said at Cana in Galilee: "Do whatever he tells you".

Credits and References :

1) Don Bosco's Madonna, Mumbai
     April 2012, Vol- 13, No - 12
     "Mary's Visits" by Roberto Spataro
       Page 29

2) Official Website of Our Lady of Lourdes, France

http://en.lourdes-france.org/

LENT 2015

Dear Friends in Jesus and Mary,

Greetings.

This Year, we celebrate Ash Wednesday - the beginning of Lent on the 18th of February 2015.

During this Lenten Season, one of the most common themes that keeps coming to us through "Holy Scripture" is that of "conversion and repentance".

You might be tempted to "Not Listen" as it comes to us once more this year. We are more likely, not to want to face the fact that we are in need of conversion and repentance which becomes a prerequisite for reconciliation.

Lent to me is an awesome "Liturgical Season".

We are called upon to sacrifice and renew ourselves not only physically but also mentally. To me, it is a season of "Unfathomable Spiritual Riches".

Please read my forthcoming post @ my blog which is all about "Lent - A Time of Rediscovery".

Lenten Blessings to each one of us and specially to the readers of my Blog.