"Our Kids Dress Themselves"

I found this short (1:38) video while browsing this blog that I found from Conversion Diary's "7 Quick Takes Friday." Foster care/adoption is such a brave and beautiful act of giving - it always touches my heart to meet or hear about people who have opened their homes, lives and their very selves to children in need.




Cloistered nuns tend to have one or two causes that are especially important to them. They spend extra time in prayer for these things that God has placed in their hearts. As a Franciscan, I'll be dedicated to the conversion of sinners and the poor, but I think I'm also called to pray for children seeking love and stability through adoption or foster care.

Vocations directors for dioceses and religious orders often remark that a key point in many young people's discernment is someone posing a simple question to them: "Do you think you might be called to religious life/priesthood?" So I guess that's what I'm doing with this video - posing a question and hopefully planting a seed in someone's heart.

Third Day and Lacey Mosley (of Flyleaf) TOGETHER!

On this feast of St. Mary Magdalene, l pray that her intercession will obtain for me this fidelity of love.

When Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and did not find the Lord’s body, she thought it had been taken away and so informed the disciples. After they came and saw the tomb, they too believed what Mary had told them. The text then says: The disciples went back home, and it adds: but Mary wept and remained standing outside the tomb.

We should reflect on Mary’s attitude and the great love she felt for Christ; for though the disciples had left the tomb, she remained. She was still seeking the one she had not found, and while she sought she wept; burning with the fire of love, she longed for him who she thought had been taken away. And so it happened that the woman who stayed behind to seek Christ was the only one to see him. For perseverance is essential to any good deed, as the voice of truth tells us: Whoever perseveres to the end will be saved.

At first she sought but did not find, but when she persevered it happened that she found what she was looking for. When our desires are not satisfied, they grow stronger, and becoming stronger they take hold of their object. Holy desires likewise grow with anticipation, and if they do not grow they are not really desires. Anyone who succeeds in attaining the truth has burned with such a great love. As David says: My soul has thirsted for the living God; when shall I come and appear before the face of God? And so also in the Song of Songs the Church says: I was wounded by love; and again: My soul is melted with love.

Woman, why are you weeping? Whom do you seek? She is asked why she is sorrowing so that her desire might be strengthened; for when she mentions whom she is seeking, her love is kindled all the more ardently.

Jesus says to her: Mary. Jesus is not recognised when he calls her “woman”; so he calls her by name, as though he were saying: Recognise me as I recognise you; for I do not know you as I know others; I know you as yourself. And so Mary, once addressed by name, recognises who is speaking. She immediately calls him rabboni, that is to say, teacher, because the one whom she sought outwardly was the one who inwardly taught her to keep on searching.

- St. Gregory the Great, Pope

Holy St. Mary Magdalene, first to encounter our resurrected Lord, pray for us! Obtain for us the fidelity of love that anchored you at the foot of the cross and outside the empty tomb - the fidelity of love that opened your soul to the glory of the resurrection. Amen.