Tag Archives: prayer

Everyday Miracles

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Here is one everyday miracle:

I went into a church to say some prayers before going to work on the weekend. I had taken my lunch in a plastic ziplock bag with me. I placed the bag next to me on the pew and closed my eyes and knelt. I was think about two things— I wished I had an extra $20.00 to donate to St. Anthony’s bread and the other that I had judged a friend mother who had recently died to harshly and I was asking for forgiveness. When Iopened my eyes and sat back down on the pew I found a $20.00 bill and folded sheets of paper cliped to my plastic lunch bag (the sheets had forgivenesss prayers on them). That is my everyday miracle.

Holy People: St. Vincent de Paul, feast day September 27

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St.VDEP“Go to the poor; you will find God.”
Vincent de Paul 1581-1660
Patron of: Abandoned Children, Charity, Orphans, Nurses, Slaves, Convicts, Prisoners.

Born into a peasant family in Gascony, France, Vincent de Paul was an exceptional student. Assigned by his order to attend to the spiritual needs of French royals, Vincent’s life as a priest would present him with vast contrasts. While on a journey he was unexpectedly taken prisoner by Turkish pirates and sold into slavery. When he converted one of his slave owners, he was released, and on his return to France, founded numerous charitable organizations dedicated to the needs of prisoners, orphans, and the poor. These organizations were the first of their kind and still thrive today. Because he improved the lives of so many of them, he is especially called on to protect children who have been abandoned by their families. Vincent de Paul was ordained a priest at the age of nineteen. Staying in Toulouse, he made a voyage to Marseille to claim an inheritance. Upon his return by sea, he was kidnapped by pirates and taken to Tunis. After being enslaved by three different owners, he returned to France in 1607 upon his last owner’s conversion. As a parish priest in Paris, he came in contact with some of the wealthiest and most influential families in France. In 17th century Europe, the poor, the orphaned and the abandoned were all considered of the same invisible class as convicts. Seeing the face of God in these forgotten people, he used his numerous connections with the upper classes to help tend to their needs. Vincent de Paul introduced a much needed concept of Christian compassion to society by forming the Daughters of Charity. This organization gave pious wealthy women a way of serving the poor. Financial donations poured in, and Vincent started “Servants of the Poor” and “Ladies of the Poor”, each charity devoted to either the sick, the orphaned, or the imprisoned.

Within a few years Vincent’s charities were started in other countries, Italy, Poland, Ireland, Scotland, the Hebrides, and Madagascar each had a mission. He never forgot or gave up on the lot of prisoners, and sent missionaries to ransom and spiritually tend those in Tunis and Algeria. He also dedicated much time and money to alleviating the suffering of convicts in France. Living during a time of religious wars, Vincent encouraged peace between Protestants and Catholics. Offering refuge to exiled Catholics from England and Ireland, he also ordered his missionaries in the French countryside to respect and help out any needy Protestants. Though he was frequently welcomed by the King and Queen of France, his first devotion was to the poor and he used his royal audiences to obtain state funds for his many missions and hospitals. Vincent de Paul worked tirelessly until his death and it is said that he did more than any other person to relieve the burden of the poor in the seventeenth century.

Novena

God you were patient with St. Vincent de Paul as you moved him from
self-centeredness to be centered on you. Help me through his intercession
to grant me this petition and to know that you will grant what I desire in
your own time (your intention here) . I thank you God for everything and I
will imitate St. Vincent de Paul in growing in holiness through prayer,
participation in the sacraments and service to my neighbor especially the
poor.
Amen.

Mystic

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Padre-Pio-young

Padre Pio 1887-1968
Patron of: Forgiveness, Healing, Miracles, Reconciliation.

Denounced by Vatican officials as a fraud, and his mystical gifts frequently viewed with suspicion by his immediate superiors, Pio of Pietracelina was sequestered away in the remote monastery of San Giovanni Rotondo where it was expected that he would labor as a monk in obscurity. His adeptness in both physical and spiritual healing and his ability to read hearts and minds while in confession made him wildly popular among the common people of that impoverished region of Italy. Today, the town of San Giovanni Rotondo is the second most visited place by religious pilgrims who venture there to pay homage to one of the most popular saints of the twentieth century, Padre Pio. Made a saint in 2002, Padre Pio has no official patronage. Because of his devotion to the powers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and his own suffering due to the mistrust of his superiors, he is frequently invoked to bring the grace of forgiveness to a situation.

Born Francesco Forlione in Pietracelina, a town north of Naples, he was named for his patron saint, Francis of Assisi. Coming from a religious family, he said he had spiritual visions of Christ and the Virgin Mary from a very young age. He never mentioned them to anyone as he assumed all people had such gifts. He was ordained as a Capuchin friar in 1910 taking the name Pio (meaning “Pious”) but was sent home due to a diagnosis of tuberculosis. While convalescing he offered himself as a conduit of suffering in exchange for the salvation of others. Eventually, in 1916 he was conscripted into the army where he contracted such a high fever that he was sent home to die. Upon his miraculous recovery from this illness, the Capuchin order sent him to the very remote monastery of Our Lady of Grace in San Giovanni Rotondo in Puglia, a province of Southern Italy. On September 20, 1918, while praying in the stillness of the church, Pio went into a trancelike state where he saw Christ standing before him bleeding from the wounds of the crucifixion. Pio’s heart almost burst in sympathy before coming out of the state in intense pain. Upon regaining consciousness he found himself to be afflicted with the same wounds of the crucifixion. It was this condition which only ended at his death in 1968, which would bring him under intense scrutiny by church officials for the rest of his life.

Pio’s talents for deciphering what people meant to tell him during confession but were too embarrassed or ashamed to bring up, became immediate apparent to the local townspeople and he developed a great following among them. They credited him with an incredible capacity of healing, mending physical ills, familial squabbles, and curing spiritual desolation. When Vatican Officials severely limited his official duties, the one mass he was allowed to say at 5 AM, had thousands lining up the night before so that they may be with him. Without ever leaving the monastery, he was known as “the living saint” as he sighted in hospitals and at sickbeds hundreds of miles away. The onset of World War Two spread his cult on an international level as soldiers from Australia, other parts of Europe, and the United States witnessed his miraculous abilities. By the late 1940’s he was receiving hundreds of international prayer requests per day.

He eventually founded a hospital for the hopelessly ill, the internationally acclaimed House for the Relief of Suffering, which treats tens of thousands of people each year and survives solely on charitable donations.

The animosity that many Vatican officials had against Padre Pio was dissolved in 2002 when Pope John Paul II declared him a saint. This pope knew Pio’s powers firsthand as he had visited him fifty years before as a young seminarian in the hopes of obtaining a cure for a friend. Not only did his friend’s cancer go into remission, but Pio’s strange prediction of this obscure Polish priest’s rise to pope also came true.

It is important to note that Padre Pio himself recited the Novena to the Sacred Heart of Jesus for the intentions of those who requested his prayers every day.

Novena

Dear God, Thou hast generously blessed Thy servant, St. Pio of Pietrelcina, with the gifts of the Spirit. Thou hast marked his body with the five wounds of Christ Crucified, as a powerful witness to the saving Passion and Death of Thy Son. Endowed with the gift of discernment, St. Pio labored endlessly in the confessional for the salvation of souls. With reverence and intense devotion in the celebration of Mass, he invited countless men and women to a greater union with Jesus Christ in the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist.

Through the intercession of St. Pio of Pietrelcina, I confidently beseech Thee to grant me the grace of (mention your intentions here). Amen.

Recite three Glorias.