Your Guardian Angel- your greatest friend

Greetings all, Glory here. You have a great and powerful friend in your guardian angel.  He was given to you by God Himself, he will never leave you.

The angels are finite pure spirits modelled on the INFINITE, PURE,  SPIRIT WHICH IS GOD.

In our world we look around at the beauty and variety in nature different trees, flowers, birds, especially ourselves - none of us are exactly alike - but the beauty in our world dims into plainness compared to the angelic world.  St Thomas Aquinas tells us that the difference in each individual angel is immense, as different as a man and a rose or a fly and an elephant!

The angels are a luminous image of DIVINITY'S  PERFECTIONS  - STUPENDOUS  in its beauty - STAGGERING in its wide variety.  Yet all this is no more than a foggy outline of  the BEAUTY OF GOD.

God Himself gives each of us a guardian angel.  Your angel burning with love for God and full of intense love for you, interceding constantly for you to God.
Our guardian angel may not interfere with our free will, but he will do his very best urging us to correct our weaknesses, he is ever on the alert to protect us from danger and to turn our thoughts to God.  His efforts on our behalf are unceasing.  Love him, he never forgets you!
Our guardian angel's knowledge is all that our own is not - accurate, complete, absolutely firsthand, coming to him from TRUTH  ITSELF - GOD.

ST JOSEPH [first century]

Husband of the Blessed Virgin Mary
He has two feastdays, his main one is on 19th March and on 1st May we celebrate him as St Joseph the worker.
Our facts about St Joseph comes from the New Testament.
Matt.[1:18-25] "Mary was betrothed to Joseph but before they came to live together she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit.  Her husband Joseph, being a man of honour and wanting to spare her publicity, decided to divorce her informally.  He had made up his mind to do this when the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said: "Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because she has conceived what is in her by the Holy Spirit.  She will give birth to a son and you must name him Jesus, because he is the one who is to save his people from their sins". So Joseph did what the angel said and took Mary home as his wife.

Joseph was in the stable in Bethlehem when
 Jesus was born.  What a joy for this holy man to take into his arms this tiny trembling little baby! To hear his first faint cry.  To this saint was given charge of the King of the Universe and His holy Mother!  Joseph must have wished with all his heart for better lodgings for the little one and his mother, but God chose to be born in extreme poverty in a stable!

We next hear of Joseph when he is again visited by an angel in a dream.  Matt. [2:13-15] "Get up take the child and his mother with you and escape into Egypt and stay there until I tell you, because Herod intends to search for the child and do away with him".  So Joseph got up and taking the child and his mother with him, left that night for Egypt, where he stayed until Herod was dead.

When Jesus was 12 years old he went up to Jerusalem for the feast of Passover with Joseph and Mary but Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem without his parents knowing, it took Mary and Joseph 3 days to find him. What heartache and grief did this holy couple go through!  They searched for their greatest treasure Jesus, finally they found him in the temple, sitting among the doctors listening to them, and asking them questions and all those who heard him were astounded at his intelligence and his answers.  They were overcome when they saw him and his mother said to him "My child why have you done this to us?  See how worried your father and I have been looking for you.  "Why were you looking for me?   Did you not know that I must be busy with My Father's business?  But they did not understand what he meant.  Jesus then went with them to Nazareth.

It was Joseph who guided the boy Jesus's first attempts at carpentry. It would have been his dear foster father who helped with the first things he made who encouraged him when he was learning.

Joseph it is believed, died before Jesus started his public life.  He would have died in the arms of Jesus and Mary, that is why he is the patron of a happy death.
Devotion to St Joseph has increased down the years, especially owing to the zeal of such saints as St Bernard, St Gertrude, St Bridget of Sweden.  St Teresa of Avila dedicated the mother-house of her reformed Carmelite convent at Avila to St Joseph and had great devotion to this great man.  St Ignatius of Loyola also had great devotion to St Joseph.
On December 8th 1870, Pope Pius 1X declared St Joseph "Patron of the Universal Church".  His name was added to the Canon of the mass by Blessed John XX111 in 1962.  Pope Leo X111 wrote a great Encyclical QUAMQUAM PLURIES [on devotion to St Joseph] on 15th August 1889.

He is also the patron saint of Fathers, of manual workers, and of social justice.

ST THOMAS AQUINAS

St Thomas was born about 1225 [exact date unknown] at Rocca Secca near Aquino.  He was educated from the age of five to thirteen at the monastery of Monte Cassino [founded by St Benedict], and later at the university of Naples.  While in Naples he met and was attracted by the Dominican friars.  He planned to join their order and at the age of about 19 he was received and clothed in the habit of the order.  This caused great indignation in his home partly because the Dominicans were mendicants [an order that worked but also begged for their living].  His family captured him and kept him under house arrest for almost 2 years, but finally the family gave up and in 1245 allowed him to return to his order.

In 1245 St Thomas set off for Paris to do his novitiate with the Dominicans.  St Albert the great became St Thomas's teacher in Paris.  St Albert immediately saw the great intellect and holiness in Thomas.  At Naples and Paris Thomas studied the writings of the great Christian thinkers, the Fathers of the Church, also he studied the writings of great Muslim scholars such as Avicenna and of important Jewish thinkers such as Moses Maimonides.  Above all he studied the writings of Aristotle who, became for him, simply, 'the philosopher'.

St Albert took St Thomas to Cologne where Thomas completed his studies.  At Cologne he was nicknamed 'The Dumb Ox' because of his silent ways and huge size, but he was really a brilliant student.

He completed his studies with St Albert and then returned to Paris to begin his career as a teacher at the university.  After 4 years Thomas was appointed professor of Theology in 1256.  St Thomas was sent back to Italy in 1259 where he stayed for 10 years.  About this time he started the most important work of his life his 'Summa Theologica' this writing which fills about 5 volumes is a comprehensive statement of his mature thought on all the Christian mysteries.

In 1272 St Thomas was recalled to Naples as regent of studies.  Here on 6th December he experienced a revelation of God, after which he dictated no more, but said that all he had written in comparison to what he had seen was like so much straw.  So leaving his great work 'Summa Theologiae' unfinished.

He died on his way to the Council of Lyons on 7th March 1274.  He was about 49 years old.

St Thomas was not only a great writer, but a man full of humility, gentle, kind full of the Holy Spirit.  He was able to write about sublime things clearly, this is why he has the title 'Angelic Doctor'.  St Thomas was canonized in 1323.  St Pius V conferred on him the title Doctor of the Church on 15th April 1567.

The Problem of Suffering

Greetings to you, Glory here, It seems to me there is an awful lot of suffering in this world. Jesus suffered all His life, from His birth in piercing cold in a stable to a horrific death on a cross.  What about His Mother? How did she survive watching her son in such agony? I believe that if God had not miraculously sustained His Mother, she could not possibly have survived her martyrdom.
She was His Mother, a Mother more loving than all mothers combined could love.  In her heart were united natural love by which she loved Jesus as her Son, and  supernatural love, by which she loved Him as her God.
At the foot of the cross, Mary was made the Queen of Martyrs, and at the same time she became our Mother, the Comforter of the Afflicted, the Help of Christians and the Refuge of Sinners. 
If you are suffering in any way you have a powerful advocate in heaven your heavenly Mother, Jesus will refuse His Mother nothing, Go and ask her and especially remember her sorrows, She had to withstand them for her Son to redeem us.  I can only tell you that I have a great devotion to Our Mother of Sorrows, she has helped me so much, and got me out of so much trouble, not the least of when I got myself into debt with my spend first, worry about paying later!
Here is a little extract from the Stabat Mater prayer:

"At the cross her station keeping, Stood the mournful Mother weeping, Close to Jesus to the last".
Through her heart, His sorrow sharing, All His bitter anguish bearing,
Now at length the sword had passed.
Oh! how sad and sore distressed Was that Mother highly blest,
of the sole begotten One!
Christ above in torment hangs;
She beneath beholds the pangs
Of her dying, glorious Son
Is there one who would not weep,
'Whelmed in miseries so deep
Christ's dear Mother to behold?

GEMS FROM THE SAINTS

" Oh what inspiration there is in the Crucifix!  who could find it hard to persevere at the sight of a God who never commands us to do anything
which he has not first practised himself?
[St John Vianney Cure of Ars]

" I was all alone without a single friend to give me a word of encouragement.  I could neither pray nor read, but there I remained for hours uneasy in mind and afflicted in spirit on account of the weight of my troubles, and for the fear that perhaps I was being tricked by the devil and wondering what I could do for my relief, not a gleam of hope seem to shine upon me from heaven or earth, except just this:  In the midst of all my fears and dangers, I never forgot how our Lord must be seeing the weight of what I endured.  Oh my Lord Jesus Christ, what a true friend you are, and how powerful, for when you wish to be with us, you can be and you always do wish it, if only we receive you"
[words of St Teresa of Avila taken from Fr. Benedict Groeschel's book 'Arise from Darkness]

" The key to love of God is prayer.  By turning your eyes on God in meditation, your whole soul will be filled with God.  Begin all your prayers in the presence of God.
For busy people of the world, he advised "Retire at various times into the solitude of your own heart even while outwardly engaged in discussions or transactions with others and talk to God".

The test of prayer was a persons's actions:  " To be an angel in prayer and a beast in one's relations with people is to go lame on both legs".
He believed the worst sin was to judge someone or to gossip about them.
"Even if we say we do it out of love we are still doing it to look better ourselves. But we should be as gentle and forgiving with ourselves as we should be with others".
[St Francis de Sales]

The Rosary

The Rosary is my favourite prayer.
What is the rosary if not a series of prayerful reflections on the kernel of Scripture which most concerns us, namely the Good News of our Salvation?
Take the joyful mysteries for example, every one of them are in Luke's gospel.
If you want to grow in holiness, say the rosary every day. Jesus himself gave us the 'Our Father' and the 'hail Mary' the first half of it was given to us by the angel Gabriel [Luke 1:26-28].

The Holy Spirit will speak to your heart while you are praying the Rosary and then you will say just like the disciples on the way to Emmaus "Did not our hearts burn within us as He talked to us on the road and explained the scripture to us? [Luke 24:32]

St Teresa of Avila

St Teresa of Avila [1515 - 1582] foundress of the Discalced Carmelites, and Doctor of the Church.  Teresa was born in Spain of a noble Castillian family.
Teresa loved reading the lives of the saints.  After the death of her mother Teresa decided to become a nun.  At that time the discipline in the convent was very lax.  After a series of visions St Teresa founded  in 1561 a reformed convent involving strict enclosure, perpetual silence, and poverty in Avila.

From 1568 onwards Teresa collaborated with St John of the Cross in the establishment of reformed friars.  Her book on comtemplative prayer the "Interior Castle" is excellent.