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"Active life, with all its labor and fatigues endured for the sake of Christ whom we serve in our neighbor, is very meritorious; "happy, however is the home where Mary causes the complaint of Martha" and refuses to take away from prayer a life which ordinary occupations might appear to claim.

God is indeed the author of all grace and wishes to be recognized as such; and contemplative life, which puts souls in direct contact with him, assures their personal sanctification more fully and obtains more efficaciously the graces by which a Christian apostleship becomes fruitful.

Let us esteem at its just value the position that Jesus reserves to Mary, and if He calls us to share in Martha's solicitude, let us endeavor like the Saints, to make up by the spirit of prayer, for what is wanting in active life."

Source: Daily Missal with Vespers for Sundays & Feasts By Gaspar Lefebvre · 1925

"All Ecclesiastical matters throughout the world are, by divine right, to be referred to the apostolic see, that to St. Peter, the author of its name and honor" Pope Innocent I

Source: The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, Butler

Sainte Anne, Bretagne

Great Patriarch, Saint Joachim and good Saint Anne, deserving by your singular virtue to be chosen by Divine Providence to give to the world that Immaculate Queen, in whom all nations were to be blessed, and who, in her virginal bosom, was to bear the Savior of the human race; we who are your devout clients rejoice with you in this your great privilege, and implore you to extend your special protection to ourselves and our families.

Dear Saints, do no let the devil and sin find a place in our hearts, nor the false wisdom of the world to lead us astray. Do not permit us to live unmindful of eternity, for which we have been created. Obtain for us from God a firm and unshaken faith, that we may oppose the wickedness and errors which are ever being spread abroad by the enemies of Holy Church and the Apostolic See. Give us a sincere and constant devotion to the Vicar of Jesus Christ, the Roman Pontiff, and an unfailing courage in answering lies against those things which are most sacred and venerable in our holy religion.

You are powerful because of the love which your holy daughter Mary bears toward you. Assist the cause of the Church. Gain for her the victory for which she sighs, scatter the powers of darkness, destroy their pride, and grant that the light of the true Faith may shine brightly in all minds.

Grant us, above all, a tender and childlike devotion to your beloved daughter and our Mother, Mary most holy, so that we, honoring her daily with our devout homage, may be made worthy to be numbered among her children. And after the miseries of this exile, may we be brought to praise and bless the mercy of God forever in Heaven Amen.

Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be (three times)

O Joachim, husband of holy Anne, father of the merciful Virgin, bring us, your servants help for our salvation.
Good Saint Anne, Help of the Church, pray for us.

Rev. Fr. Lawrence Lovasik, Good Saint Anne, 1955

French furniture patrimony of the French ministry of culture, under the reference PM35002875.

The Guardianship of God: There is no protection comparable with that of God and his Saints; the life of St. Lupus, bishop of Troyes, is about to afford us an example thereof. Lupus had been raised, despite all opposition on his part, and by reason of his sanctity, to the see of Troyes. He had been directed by the bishop of Gaul to proceed in company with St. Germain of Auxerre to England, in order to combat the Pelagian heresy, and had the glory of entirely uprooting it there. Having returned to his diocese, he was surprised in the midst of his apostolic labors by the invasion of Attila. Thrace, Syria, and Greece, had been laid waste; Rheims, Cambrai, Besancon, Auxerre, and Langres were merely heaps of ruin; the turn of the town of Troyes had come. Lupus prayed himself, and got his people to pray during three days and three nights; he placed his flock under the protection of God, and went forward to meet the ferocious conqueror. "I am the scourge of God!" said the king of the Huns, "and am come to destroy you." "Beware!" replied the bishop; "God crushes the instruments He has made use of." Attila, astonished at such boldness, turned his army aside from its onward march, and was defeated in the plains of Mery. St. Lupus died in 478.

Moral reflection: "God is wonderful in His saints, and will give power and strength to His people." (Psalm LXVII. 36)

Source: Pictorial half hours with the saints, Abbe Auguste François Lecanu

Sacred Heart Catholic Church, Raleigh NC

"The priest is a man of the people, a father, a friend, a guide, a defender. It is his duty to commend good, to denounce evil, to lead the people into virtue, to keep them from vice, to guard the fold from the ravening wolves, to feed the sheep with life-giving food, to train them in the ways that lead to strength and beauty of goodness.

What a work the Christian priesthood had done in the history of the world! It preached the Gospel to pagan Rome and Jewish Palestine, it converted Constantine and his empire; and evangelized the barbarians; it brought the Gospel of Christ to every nation; it built the Christian altar by the running brook, on the hillside and in the mountain fastness, that everywhere the people might have salvation; near the altar; it built the Christian school; it preserved letters and science, and civilized the world.

The saints of old, who taught men morality, established Christianity and ruled the Christian Church, were priests. The missionaries, who gave up life and its ambitions to consecrate themselves to the service of God, were saintly priests of the Christian Church. They built the Church of God into the life of every nation; they have brought the Church to this land and to our day. We are the successors to that same priesthood, and upon us falls the same responsibility.

The priest of today must be prepared to meet the exigencies of the times; he must have the spirit of his vocation and courage of his convictions, manfully and fearlessly standing for the truth. He is called to be a leader."

Source: Our Church, Her Children and Institutions, 1908 By Rt. Rev. Thomas. J. Conaty, D.D.

Prayer for Spiritual Fathers

Most gracious Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for thou faithful priests and bishops, whose spiritual fatherhood and example of fidelity, self-sacrifice, and devotion is so vital to the faith of your people. May our spiritual fathers be guided by the example of St. John Vianney. Give them valiant faith in the face of confusion and conflict, hope in time of trouble and sorrow, and steadfast love for Thee, for their families, and for all Thou people throughout the world.

May the light of Thy Truth shine through their lives and their good works. Assist all spiritual fathers, that through Thy Grace they may steadily grow in holiness and in knowledge and understanding of Thy Truth. May they generously impart this knowledge to those who rely on them, Through Christ our Lord, Amen.

Source: CAPG Faithfulness of Christ, Faithfulness of Priests: Curé of Ars St. John Marie Vianney, a true example of a pastor at the service of Christ's flock.

"The Pope had very special and peculiar difficulty in dealing with the Catholic Modernists; for Modernism was very insidious in its methods. The Modernists said: there may be difficulties about the dogmas of faith from the point of view of philosophy and historical criticism; they may not be philosophically and historically true; but, even so, their religious value remains, for they can be believed by faith. To the ordinary faithful Faith meant intellectual assent to truths on the authority of the word of God. It seemed, then, as if the Catholic Modernists were not impugning the intellectual truth of the dogmas of faith. But the Modernists meant by Faith the use of dogmas as rules of action; we should live and act, they said, as if Christ were God, as if He had arisen from the dead, as if He were really present in the Blessed Eucharist. There was then an equivocal use of the word "faith".

The true faith of the Church was being undermined. Intellectual assent to the dogmas of faith on the authority of God would be impossible if the dogmas themselves were philosophically or historically false. Thus Modernism was a formula or prescription for an easy imperceptible death to Christianity. But Pope Pius X. intervened, and saved his people from the poisoned prescriptions of the Modernists." The Catholic Book Bulletin, Vol 1 P33-34 1911, Modernism and the Old Faith by Very Rev. Fr. Daniel Goghlan, D.D.

Prayer to the Holy Angels for Parishes
All you legions and choirs of Angels, please make haste to come to the aid and defense of our One Holy Roman Catholic Church. Led by St. Michael, may She be protected from destruction within by all modernistic attempts that try to diminish the true presence of God and take away His proper and due respect! In particular, come to the aid of my parish (name your parish) that it may remain or be remade to be a place of reverence and a stronghold from which the One True Triune God may continue to lead and strengthen us. Amen.

 What would happen to a priest already sharing in the priesthood of Christ by reason of his ordination, if he refused to share in Christ’s condition of victim? He would certainly be falling away from the priestly ideal: his life would become disordered, disturbed, and confused. He would remain a minister of Christ but without a sincere love for his affectionate Master. No longer a man of God but a man of the world, a man whose life has become vain, superficial, barren. This deplorable state of sterility reveals in an even better light the fruitfulness of a genuine apostolate, just as it is easier to appreciate the value of justice when we see the suffering resulting from injustice. Every priest should ask for the grace to be a victim in the way God wants him to be, to suffer patiently whatever God has willed for him from all eternity, so that he takes up his cross each day not simply as a faithful follower of Christ but as a priest standing in the place of Christ himself. He must undergo a mystical death before his physical death.


Source: The Priest in Union with Christ, Father Reginal Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.

Pietro Novelli

Prayer to the Holy Virgin of Mount Carmel

O Most Blessed and Immaculate Virgin, ornament and splendor of Carmel, thou who regardest with an eye of special kindness those who wear thy blessed habit, look down also benignly upon me and cover me with the mantle of thy special protection. Strengthen my weakness with thy power; enlighten the darkness of my mind with thy wisdom; increase in me faith, hope, and charity. Adorn my soul with such graces and virtues as will ever be pleasing to thy divine Son and to thee. Assist me in life, and console me in death, with thy most amiable presence, and present me to the most august Trinity as thy devoted servant and child; that I may eternally bless and praise thee in paradise. Amen
2 Hail Marys and Glory be to the Father.  The New Raccolta 1903

Bring back the Cloistered Nuns! (Sensus Fidelium Video)

From the Past: Carmelites in North Carolina

Seven Carmelite Nuns of the Strict Ancien observance of the Mother-Carmel at Lanark, Allentown, Pa., will soon be transferred to Asheville, N.C. , to found a new Carmelite Monastery there under the title of "Carmel of St. Joseph and the Holy Child."
The nuns are going to North Carolina at the invitation of the Most Rev. Vincent S. Waters, Bishop of Raleigh. Their establishment in the Raleigh Diocese will be the first monastery for strictly cloistered nuns in North Carolina.

Bishop to Pontificate
Solemn opening services and the first Mass will be celebrated at the new Asheville Carmel by Bishop Waters on March 19..
Authorization for the new monastery has come from Pope Pius XII through the Sacred Congregation for the Religious, since the nuns are members of a Papal Institute. Previous approval had been granted by the most Rev. John F. O'Hara, C.S.C., Archbishop of Philadelphia.
This will be the second Carmelite monastery to be founded in the United States from the Allentown Mother-Carmel. In November 1954, seven nuns left there to establish a new Carmel in Wahpeton, North Dakota.

Departure Ceremonies
Special departure ceremonies were conducted at the Allentown Monastery on March 7. The Rt. Rev. Msgr. Leo G. Fink, P.A., V.F., presided and presented Mission Crosses to the seven nuns who will form the new North Carolina community. They are: Reverend Mother M. Bernadette of Our Lady of Lourdes, a native of Philadelphia, who entered the Allentown Carmel on March 5, 1934. She will serve as Mother Prioress to the new community.
Sister Mary Magdalen of Jesus, of Allentown, who entered the Allentown Carmel on July 16, 1933, Assistant to the Mother Prioress.
Also, Sister Mary Anne of St. Bartholomew, of Philadelphia; Sister Mary Veronica of the Holy Face, Jersey City, N.J.; Sister Mary Patricia of the Nativity, of Philadelphia; Sister Mary Genevieve of the Holy Face, of Philadelphia; and Sister Marie of the Sacred Heart, candidate for the new novitiate of New Bedford, Mass.

Note 25th Anniversary
The Allentown Carmelites are currently celebrating the 25th anniversary of their establishment in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia, which marks their first foundation in the United State, under the leadership of the late Reverend Mother Therese of Jesus and her companion, Mother Clement Mary of the Guardian Angel. The Carmelites were established by the General of the Carmelite Order, Blessed John Soreth, Ord. Carm. , on October 14, 1453, at Guelder, Holland. About 26 years before, St. Teresa of Avila began her reform of the Carmelites, in Spain, a branch of the original monastery was founded in Naples, Italy, in 1536. it was from this Carmelite Monastery of Naples in Italy that Carmel of the Strict Ancient Observance extended to American soil its first Foundation on May 22, 1931, at Lanark, near Allentown.

Life of a Carmelite
These Carmelite nuns take Solemn Vows of obedience, chastity and poverty, and observe strict Papal Enclosure. The choir religious chant the Divine Office in common. In addition to the Divine office, the cloistered religious observe perpetual adoration of the Holy Sacrament. Day and night, one or two Sisters kneel before the tabernacle, adoring, praising, petitioning for the needs of Mother Church throughout the world, for the Vicar of Christ on earth, for personal sanctification, and for the sanctification of all. The greater part of the day and night of the cloistered nuns is spent in prayer, meditation and other spiritual exercises. A certain part of the day is devoted to manual labor.

Source: The Catholic Standard and Times, Vol. 61, 9 March 1956

"Ah, yes! "It is the Mass that matters" for us Catholics; and herein lies the explanation of the sinister efforts of the enemies of our holy Faith to render the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice impossible. For, says St. Bonaventure, "take away the Sacrament, and what will there be left in the world but error and infidelity?"
(...)
"But by this Sacrament," continues the Saint, "the Church stands, faith is confirmed, the Christian religion and Divine worship flourish." (On the Preparation for Mass, I i 3)"

Source: The psychology of Practical Godlessness The American Catholic Quarterly Review, Volume 47 edited by James Andrew Corcoran, Patrick John Ryan, Edmond Francis Prendergast

St. Felicity and her Seven Sons

"The Christian Mother: A mother has not done her entire duty when she has trained for the world, and according to the spirit prevailing in the world, her children as honorable citizens. A Roman matron, name Felicitas, has inspired her seven sons with sentiments of the purest Christianity, and the example of this excellent family exercised so great an influence, that many pagans, at the sight thereof, became Christians. The pagan priests denounced her to the emperor Antoninus, and Felicitas and her sons were soon cited to appear before the prefect Publius. No manner of remonstrance, threat, or promise did he refrain from making to each one separately, but all in vain; and when the generous mother beheld the moment of their sentence approaching, she thus addressed her sons: "Look heavenward, my children, behold Jesus Christ stretching forth His arms and battling for your souls!" They were condemned to difference kinds of torture, and martyred at intervals. Felicitas died with the last of her children, four months after the death of the first who had suffered martyrdom. This glorious event occurred in the year 164 of the Christian era.

Moral reflection: A Christian mother should ever keep before her eyes this example, as also that of the mother of the Maccabees, ever "to be admired above measure, and worthy to be remembered by good men." (2 Mach.7.20) Pictorial half hours with the saints by Auguste François Lecanu

A Motherʼs Prayer

O God, grant that one of my sons may become a priest! I myself want to live as a good Christian and want to guide my children always to do what is right, so that I may receive the grace, O God, to be allowed to give you a holy priest!  Amen. Mothers of Lu (Italy)

A Mother’s Prayer for a Seminarian

O Jesus, eternal High Priest, Who hast entrusted to priests the important work of saving souls, and Who has deigned to inspire my child, my own flesh and blood, to strive after the high office of the Priesthood, I pray Thee most fervently to bless and assist him, and to make him more worthy day by day. Give him success and perseverance in his studies and constant growth in virtue and holiness. Help him, O Jesus, overcome all temptations arising from the world, the flesh and the devil, which seek to frustrate his holy vocation. Fill his heart with burning love for God and for souls redeemed by Thy most Precious Blood.

Grant me, O Lord, the unmerited grace one day to behold my own child in priestly garb ascending the holy altar of God, and to receive from his consecrated hands the priestly blessing and the Bread of Life Eternal.

As long as I live, O Jesus, I shall every day offer Thee, through the hands of Mary, the Mother of priests, all my prayers, works and sacrifices, to call down God’s blessing upon the work of priests, and especially upon my son. The Catholic Standard and Times, Volume 61, Number 32, 4 May 1956