You Are The Father's Beloved.

You are the Father’s Beloved.

No matter what anguish you are experiencing;

No matter how many sins you have committed;

No matter how many times you have turned away from Him;

No matter what horrible things have happened to you;

No matter if you are very angry with Him for allowing terrible things to happen;

No matter that it seems like your life is totally messed up;

You are and always have been the Father’s Beloved Child.

The Father has created you to be a unique, irreplaceable image of Himself.  No one can take your place.  The Father desires that you enter into a union with His Beloved Son Jesus and His Holy Spirit that will make you unimaginably happy forever.

Today (August 7) is a day that God the Father in an approved private revelation to Mother Eugenia Ravasio in 1932 suggested be established as a feast in His Honor. You can read the whole message at: http://www.theworkofgod.org/God.htm

Up to this point (2013) God the Father has no feast day.  If one is established by the Church it will open up a floodgate of blessings as more and more of God’s beloved children come to realize that they have an Infinite Loving Father Who desires to be known, honored, and loved by them in order to draw them into the happiness He created them to experience.  You can read another article about this on today’s Spirit Daily website: http://www.spiritdaily.com/GodtheFather.htm

Priest Helps Boy Who Had Committed Suicide

Today I read a great article on the Spirit Daily website that shows the power of prayer and especially the power of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass to help people who have committed suicide.  Here is an excerpt from the article:

A priest in Scottsdale, Arizona, has established a chapel for the souls in purgatory in part as a consequence of his own experiences with the departed on the "other side."

Father Doug Lorig, a convert from the Episcopalian faith, now pastor of one of the most prominent parishes in the Phoenix area, says the Lord has used a number of extraordinary mystical experiences to instruct him on the deeper devotions of Catholicism.

In one case he buried a 17-year-old boy named Tony, who had been involved with drugs and committed suicide. "I prayed for him at every Mass for a year and about a year later went to Queen of Heaven Cemetery for another funeral, of newborn, and parked car at far end of cemetery," says Father Doug. "I then went to the canopy and said prayers and consoled the family and was walking back past all these graves and just stopped because someone was calling my name.

"'Father Doug, Father Doug.'

"And there was nobody there.

"I looked down -- and there was Tony's grave! I happened to be right there. And I had a locution.

"I heard him clearly say to me, 'Father Doug: thank you.'"

To read the full article click on: http://www.spiritdaily.com/lorig.htm

For those grieving the loss of a loved one to suicide

This week the son of one of my friends committed suicide.  I called her and talked with her about how her prayers and love were present at the moment that her son died and that even her anguish can become a prayer for him.  Yesterday she called me back and asked me to write a letter to her daughter explaining the things that I had told her on the phone.  I said that I would and that I would also publish it on this blog so that maybe it would be able to help others who are experiencing this terrible grief.  If  you would like to read it, please click on the page that says "letter of consolation."  Feel free to use it to help other people.  We need to stay united in prayer and love and the Holy Spirit so that we can help the many victims of suicide and their families through the Mercy of our Savior Jesus Christ to attain eternal life with our Heavenly Father.  In the end that will be the only thing that really matters.

The Communion of Saints

Tomorrow would have been my mother's 99th birthday.  When she was still on earth I often asked her to pray for my intentions and I know that when I ask her now to pray for my intentions she still does, and she has a much greater power of intercession.  All the people in Heaven are Saints!  That means we all have relatives who are Saints!  We still need to pray for our loved ones who have died because they may need our prayers to get up to Heaven but it should give us great hope that we were all created by God Who is Love and that the way that leads back to Him is Love.  Let us continue to love each other down here on earth but let's not forget to love those who have left the earth and depend on our prayers.  At the same time let's learn to depend on their prayers.  This is what the Communion of Saints means.  Once Jesus said to His enemies who were questioning the Resurrection, "Haven't you read what God spoke to Moses saying 'I am the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.'?  He is not the God of the dead but of the living for all live to him."  Think about the meaning of what Jesus was saying.  Abraham lived about 1900 years before Jesus was born as a man.  He was pointing out that God didn't say, "I was the God of Abraham...."  In other words, Abraham is still alive.  Another time Jesus illustrated that He is God, as well as man, when He said, "Before Abraham came to be, I am."

Ed and Char Reddy, my parents

"Come to Me all you who labor and are burdened"

On this great feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus the very best way to celebrate is to respond to this invitation of His.  Jesus says to you and to me, "Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden light" (Matthew 11:28-30).  Just turn to Him in your heart and tell Him about all your afflictions, anxieties, sufferings, griefs, anguish, temptations, sicknesses.  And when you have told Him everything leave it all in His Heart.  Now you will see that He is sharing your burden and your heart will have a new capacity to receive the great hope that He has for you and the desire that He has to give you "a future full of hope."

"I have loved thee with an everlasting love."

God the Father speaks these words directly to you and to each person.  Each person is a unique irreplaceable image of God.  Because God is all knowing and has no beginning or end, you have always existed as an idea in His Mind and He has loved who you are.  That is why the members of LAST (Lifeline Against Suicide Team) pray for every person to realize the gift of his or her own life and to appreciate that everlasting gift.

The L.A.S.T. word

The L.A.S.T. Word

By Sister Mary Rose Reddy, DMML

“Do not harm yourself, for we are all here” (Acts 16:28).

"Do not harm yourself, for we are all here."
 (Acts 16:28)

With these words St. Paul prevented his jailer from committing suicide.  Suicide is not the last word; mercy is.  As part of our mission for the healing of families, the Daughters of Mary, Mother of Healing Love are launching the Lifeline Against Suicide Team (L.A.S.T.). 

It is very simple to join the Team, especially if you already pray a daily Rosary and/or a Divine Mercy chaplet.  L.A.S.T. uses the international Rosary as a model.  Each decade is for a different continent.  For example you might pray the first decade for Africa, the second for Australia and all the island countries, the third for Europe, the fourth for North and South America, and the fifth for Asia. All you have to do is add (mentally) an intention before each decade that people in that area tempted to suicide will be prevented from doing so, and that those who have already committed suicide will receive God’s Mercy.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives.  By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance.  The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives” (CCC 2283). 

When my childhood friend Rosemary committed suicide in 1990 it seemed that nothing would ever be alright again.  I had become a religious Sister and moved to Connecticut in 1980 and Rosemary and I had gradually fallen out of contact; but she was the kind of lifelong friend with whom I could pick up a conversation as if we had only seen each other the day before, no matter how many years had actually gone by. 

Because her favorite color was yellow, I titled the poem I wrote on the day of Rosemary’s funeral “Yellow Roses.”   The poem was a prayer asking God to have mercy on her soul.

For several months after her death I continued to grieve.  The thought that her soul might have been lost was a great anguish to me. I kept wishing that I had stayed in contact with her and that I might have been able to help her somehow. 

Then God in His Mercy began to show me that I could still help her.  I considered that “God is Love” (1 John 4:8); He loves Rosemary much more than I do, and He desires her salvation.  His Mercy is Infinite and at the moment when she realized the terrible mistake that she had made, if she turned to Jesus for mercy, she certainly would have received it.  I was greatly consoled by a saying of Saint Padre Pio, "For the Lord, the past does not exist; the future does not exist. Everything is an eternal present...even now I can pray for the happy death of my great- grandfather!"  I knew that this meant that I could pray now for Rosemary to be open to receive God’s Mercy at the moment of her death because everything is present to God.  At the moment of her death, God already saw my future prayer for Rosemary.

On the Palm Sunday after Rosemary’s death, I said to her, “If you are either in Purgatory or in Heaven, then I want you to give me a sign in one week.  It doesn’t matter what it is; but I need to know for sure that it is from you.” Exactly one week later, on Easter Sunday, I was at another convent.  I happened to be looking through a drawer filled with free holy cards.  Seeing one of my favorite pictures of Our Lady on the cover of a greeting card I took the card out and opened it.  Inside was a picture of yellow roses and the words, “Behold I am alive and I live forevermore.”

If you would like to formally join the Lifeline Against Suicide Team (L.A.S.T.), then please e-mail your name to Sister Mary Rose at: lastacts1628@gmail.com.  Also if you have any witness stories of how L.A.S.T. has helped someone, please feel free to send them to us.