Sunday, October 24, 2010

"Today God wants you to know.. that it's time to let people see your inner beauty. It's time to let people know the real you. Be who you are, not who you think people want you to be. You are more beautiful on the inside than you realize, and you need to share that beauty with others. Be transparent, let your guard down, let people know the real you."
This was a F/B friend's post this evening.  :0)

Monday, October 18, 2010

O Virgin Pure-Orthodox Byantine Chant

Agni Parthene (Αγνή Παρθένε) is a liturgical hymn composed by St. Nectarios of Aegina, drawn from the Theotokarion (Book of Hymns to the Mother of God).

Sometimes performed in Orthodox churches at the beginning of Vespers.

Refrain: O Rejoice Bride unwedded.
O Virgin pure, immaculate, O Lady Theotokos. (Refrain)
O fleece bedewed with every grace. O Virgin Queen and Mother.(Refrain)
More radiant that the rays of the sun, and higher than the heavens. (Refrain)
O joy of virgin choruses, superior to the angels. (Refrain)
O brighter than the firmament and purer that the sun's light. (Refrain)
More holy than the multitude of all the heavenly armies. (Refrain)



O ever virgin Mary of all the world, the Lady.(Refrain)
O Bride all pure immaculate, O Lady Panagia. (Refrain)
O Mary Bride and Queen of all, the cause of our rejoicing. (Refrain)
O noble Maiden, gracious Queen,
supremely holy Mother. (Refrain)
More honored than the Cherubim,
beyond compare more glorious(Refrain)
Than the unbodied Seraphim, transcending the angelic Thrones. (Refrain)

Rejoice, the song of Cherubim rejoice,
the hymn of angels
Rejoice the ode of Seraphim; the joy of the archangels.
Rejoice, O peace and happiness and cause of our rejoicing.
O sacred chamber of the Word, the flower of incorruption.
Rejoice, delightful Paradise of blessed life eternal.
Rejoice O sacred Tree of life and fount of immortality.

I supplicate you, Lady now, I fervently entreat you.
O Queen of all, I earnestly implore and seek your favor.
O gracious Maiden, spotless one, O Lady Panagia.
I call upon you ardently , O holy hallowed Temple.
O help me and deliver me protect me rom the enemy.
And make me an inheritor of blessed life eternal.

Saturday, October 9, 2010


"Jesus permits the spiritual combat as a purification, not as a punishment.  The trial is not unto death but unto salvation."  St Padre Pio
 "My heart is restless until it rests in Thee."- St Augustine

 
 

Friday, October 8, 2010


"O Divine Master, let my life be but a continual prayer, that nothing, nothing, will be able to distract me from You, neither my occupations, nor my pleasures, nor my suffering, that I may be absorbed in You. Take all my being, that Elizabeth may disappear, that only Jesus may remain."
-Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity, OCD

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Home.

Home, how does one define "home"?  Yes, one definition is the place where you grow up, and spent your formative years of life.  Home is the place where your parents live and/or where you currently live.  But what IS home?  Some say home is where the heart is, where your loves are...

Where is home for me?  Yes, my familial home is here in town, here is where my loving parents still live, thanks be to God.  Here is where I live in my Grandparents home  now they have passed.  I share the home with my brother and it is comfortable, no mortgage.  We all get along, no major dramas like some poor families I have seen over my lifetime.  I know if ever there is a need, or emergency everybody in the family drops what they are doing to help the person in need without hesitation or second thought.  Their love is unconditional and solid until the day we die, I know we would all die for the other gladly suffer for the other out of love.

BUt what about making/finding my own personal home?  Most folks by the time they hit my age have married, had children and possibly starting to have grandchildren.  They've established a home of hearth, heart, and unbreakable bonds outside of their parental.youth influence.  Why have I never found my own "home"?  Yes I am seeking the only home that matters within by trying to conform to God's ways by following Jesus' path, by making myself small so He may dwell ever more within... that is all the home I ever desire or need.  But I believe our God wants even the most basic thing for His children and that is for them to find a home, their own loving place to find a share of Nazareth on this earth until we are called to His Home.


Home...I look back over these adult years of mine, and I have lived in places where my home was terror-filled and filled with horrific pain when with my ex..  My home afterwards a place where the scars and seeping wounds too fresh needing healing was a psychic place of dealing and attempting to heal and find a measure of self again. These were the times when I was far from the Church and was "spiritual not religious", LOL, a causality of my own pride and of misdirected post Vatican 2 interpretations taught in Sunday school. Home another dwelling I paid rent on and slept in but besides for my cats felt no love and no love grew there.

I can honestly say there has been only one time in my entire life where I ever felt "at home".  Home where I felt the fullness of Gods blessings within me, and fullness of others around me caring and loving.   Mother Mary was kind in guiding me to where God wanted to teach me that there is a home here on earth.  He wanted me to be reawakened to what it felt like inside this heart of mine to be home.  Home, he showed me once and for all that home is a word that brings an interior smile and a softening of the heart at just the breath of it passing over the mind.  Home...how I miss that feeling, how I wish I felt it here with my family and in my hometown, but I feel ever the stranger, ever a step out of sync.

As more time passes that reminder flickers and fades, but Mama Mary reminds me at times.  I remember and must keep searching for the home within my heart  with Jesus and Mary... and the home God might have for me out here in this world, this life... but then again maybe He wants me to have this as my sacrifice, my offering?  to unite this with Jesus??  To keep me always yearning for that home that dwells within me as He leads and guides me to His home?  O well, trust in Jesus, trust that my Father will guide me to the home HE wishes for His wayward daughter to dwell until He calls me to His Home hopefully.

Where to now?  Ahh but Linda you know..you know...so???

Monday, October 4, 2010

My daughter, justice has already been done to God the Father for your sins, and full satisfaction made to him already for everything, according to the demands of justice.
For if you have offended God with all the limbs of your body, I have suffered for your sins and those of the entire human race in all the limbs of my body.
For if you... have offended with your hands and feet, my hands and my feet were fixed with harshest nails to the wood of the cross.
If you have offended with your head, my head was lacerated most painfully with thorns.
If with your eyes, my eyes were bound and covered with a blindfold.
If with your ears, my ears heard blasphemies and revolting insults.
If with your tongue, my tongue was sprinkled with strong vinegar and torn.
If with your heart, my heart was pierced with a lance.
If you have offended God with your entire body, my entire body has been scourged, so that from the soles of my feet to the top of my head there could be seen in me no trace of wholeness .
You can therefore see, daughter, that suitable satisfaction has been most justly done to God the Father for your sins.
Truly, I have borne in my heart the languors of every sin and their sorrows - I who did no sin, nor was any guile found in my mouth .
(The Lord Jesus Christ to St. Elizabeth, from 'The Revelations of St. Elizabeth of Toss)

Sunday, October 3, 2010

Peace Prayer

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy;
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.


Saturday, October 2, 2010


Let us keep before our minds that which makes up real holiness. Holiness
means getting above ourselves; it means perfect mastery of all our
passions. It means having real and continual contempt for ourselves and
for the things of the world to the point of preferring poverty rather
than wealth, humiliation rather than glory, suffering ...rather than
pleasure.
Holiness means loving our neighbor as ourself for love of God. In this connection holiness means loving those who curse us, who hate and persecute us and even doing good to them. Holiness means living humbly, being disinterested, prudent, just, patient, kind, chaste, meek, diligent, carrying out one's duties for no other reason than that of pleasing God and receiving from Him alone the reward one deserves. St. Padre Pio
"Bless the Lord, all his works,
  praise and exalt him for ever.
Bless the Lord, you heavens;
  all his angels, bless the Lord."
The Feast of the Guardian Angels!!  
What would this life be like without God's gift of the Guardian Angels?  All my life, and I am sure yours if raised with the knowledge of these powerful beings sent by God to protect us, guide us, teach us..all my life they have fascinated me.  How kind and loving is our Almighty Father to give us an angel when He formed us to be by our side.  

When I was a tiny thing I would know my angel was there sometimes thinking I saw my angel looking over me, comforting me especially after a surgery.  I remember lying in the hospital bed in that miserable state post-op in the days of nauseating gas anesthetic head and ear banging, throbbing in pain trying to sleep but the pain and misery too great.  Trying to not be sick on my stomach, not a fun thing after ear surgery to go calling up dinosaurs!  In those days they would not usually let the parents stay over night so my Mom would do her best to stretch the rules, lol, how sometimes she would wear down the nurses and spend the night sleeping in some uncomfortable chair with that Momma-ear open for any sound I may have made.  I would be there not sleeping and watching her catching a little half snooze and see the glowing light of a person looking over me with a overwhelming feeling of love and tenderness.  That same glow I would see next to my mother and I felt? saw? another tender glowing person resting a hand on her shoulder or head.  Many, many times growing up my angel made himself known to me visibly, usually though light glowing in a darkened room there next to me.  A few times when still young and more innocent a person so kind would show up in my room and just be there with me as the pain was unusually bad and when the nurse would finally show up with pain medicine the person who stayed with me would disappear.  Was it may angel?  As a child I believed it was, and as an adult I believe it was.  I thank God for my angel's comfort in times of childhood suffering.

Another time I would be aware or catch a glimpse of what maybe our angels was rarer but still so special, tender and full of God's love.. that was when  person was nearing death.  The first time was when I volunteered as a candy stripper at the rehab, a place where they would do hospice care before hospice care was made more home oriented.  I still remember the kind lady's face, we had spoken several times in the weeks before her death as she slowly was lead to her final end.  I remember passing by the door, her family gathered around not sure of the time she was to leave this world.  A beautiful white light was before her above the bed near the foot up towards the ceiling level in perfect eye site for one bed bound.  The warm bright light shone upon her face and touched no other or left any shadow.  She started to speak out to God and  seeing her relatives and a hand and arm of light reached towards her place on the bed and the joy on her face was like never I had seen at that phase in my life.  I had to walk on for it was not my place to witness and intrude on a family time of death.  That was when I started to stop fearing death. Feared judgment, and rightfully so!  But death not so much.  For I felt the love emanating from that Light and knew it was of God.
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{EDIT}
Well read this fast for I smell a major edit coming on before nightfall- LOL! {too late}
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Friday, October 1, 2010

o today, especially since coming home is a day of pain and ick..  didn't someone say be careful for what you pray for?   Writing this because even lying in bed is miserable this way maybe it will "help" someone?  Besides offering this day up as it grows more and more like a truck ran over me, my lungs breathed air from a burning house and my energy makes even typing this seem a struggle.

Offer it up, yes, that is what I have been doing since last night when the first glmmers of this ick started to descend over me.  So I look at the cross without a corpus and remember reading "that is so you can unite yourself and take Jesus' place on the cross one day." (bad paraphrase but you get the gist).

So my dear Beloved please take this offering of mine so meager and small, so wretched and stained, but please accept it as a Parent would accept a gift of flowers that are really weeds from a toddler...look at the love it is offered and not the sins on my soul.

To you dear Jesus let these insignificant sufferings of mine ease your suffering in some tiny, little way.  Let my head ache be united and ease somehow Thy pain from your crown of thorns as the cross beam would hit your head as you carried our sins, from the beatings with fist and reeds.

Let these knees in some tiny way cushion your knees as you fall on the rock paved road to your final act of suffering.  Let these shoulders ease your Holy shoulder, torn by the whip, beaten and now bearing the weight of our sins..each splinter finding exposed muscle, sinew and bone.

Dear beautiful Jesus so loving, so merciful- look at what our sins have done to You.  Dear Mother Mary please take the pain in my back, and use it in some way pleasing to your Divine Son, our Lord.  You are much wiser then I on how best Jesus can use these tiny offerings I place at your feet dear Mother Mary.  Please in penance for my sins, the conversion of sinners, to protect and heal and give hope to the mentally ill, suicidal, and lonely.. to protect the innocent, the lost, the suffering...so, so many in such need today.  USe me dear Mother Mary, unite me dear Mother Mary so I may one day be through the grace of God a perfect reflection of Jesus, so I may always follow your guidance and through you enter into the path of the Word Incarnate.

To You dear Jesus I give this exhaustion, this stabbing burning cough... unite it with your time nailed and struggling to draw breath... ahhh, I maybe a fool dear Jesus, but I do have faith in your love, and your mercy.  Take from me whatever You will,  use me however You desire.  Take these tiny discomforts and join them with your Divine offering to the Father Almighty however You see fit.  IF it be Thy will then heal me from this pain but only if it be Thy will..but if it does more good for you to take them and use them then please by all means do not hesitate -  take them take them take them dear Love.... I trust in You dear Jesus.. I trust in You.  Take my Love and help make it pure and all consuming for You.  FOr You.