Author: amadmin

Why Pray to Mary?

I’m sure most of you, like me, remember the annual first day of school picture. You know the one, where you stand in front of the door with your backpack and new school clothes (I went to a private elementary school, so the clothes were the same for 9 years, but still). You try and force a smile even though you’re sad because it’s so early and you know homework is imminent. At the time it was unpleasant, but now the pictures are fun to have because we can look back and see the different years, remembering the excitement and the nerves about what each year had to bring.

What I want to focus on more than pictures, though, is the person who gets you dressed (well, for a few years at least), packs your lunch, and takes the picture of you. Yes, you guessed it, I want to talk about mothers. More specifically, I want to talk about our Lord’s mother, Mary, and the way praying to her points us to her Son.

There are many surface level perceptions of our Blessed Mother. To some she’s just the woman from the paintings and statues that are all over Catholic churches. To others, she is the woman we hear about around Christmas time in the nativity story. Still others, I am sure, don’t really know what to think about Mary.

Regardless of where you stand, what we want to reflect on today is who this woman is, and why she is so important.

Personally, I never really thought much about Mary growing up. I had heard about the rosary in school, and saw my mom praying it, but actually praying a rosary myself was far from my mind. As I got older and began to have the desire to deepen my faith in the Lord, I never thought of making Mary a part of that process. I seem to have overlooked just how crucial Mary is for our spiritual journeys.

My “wow” moment with the Blessed mother came during college, when I joined a group of men in reciting a Marian prayer called the “Memorare” on a regular basis. As I began to pray this prayer consistently I would hear these words and be struck by the confidence of this plea:

“Remember, O Most Gracious Virgin Mary,

that never was it known

that anyone who fled to thy protection

or sought thy intercession

was left unaided,”

Through praying the Memorare, I began to see the power of Mary’s intercession, and understand more clearly the necessity of calling upon Mary in my time of trouble.

By Mary saying “yes,” what we refer to as her Fiat, she brought a Son into the world. Her Son, Jesus Christ, our God incarnate, was unlike any other son born of a mother. However she, like every other mother, wants us to see just how special her Son is. Just like our mothers here on earth, Mary wants to show everyone pictures of her Son, speak of what He has done and will do for so many, and proclaim His greatness.

Picture, for a deeper example of this, Mary and Jesus at the Wedding at Cana. They run out of wine, and Mary hears about this. Knowing her Son as she did, and always desiring to point people to Him, she brings the problem to Jesus and lets Him do the work. In the same way, she does this with our prayers. Mary, the Immaculately conceived Mother of God, only desires to point us to her Son and allow His will to be fulfilled in our lives.

That, my friends, is why we pray to Mary-or at least it’s why I do.

It’s not about worship or some superstitious practice.

It’s not just reciting mindless words while flipping through our rosary beads. We pray to Mary because, just like any mother, she wants to reveal her Son to us in every possible way. If we want to know her Son, there is no better way to do so than to ask His mother to introduce us. Praying to Mary never keeps our focus on her, but always points us to the One she is focused on, her Son Jesus.

And so, whatever our relationship with Mary currently is, it might be time for us step it up a notch.

Here are some suggestions:

Pray the Rosary

If you never pray the Rosary, make the effort to start, whether it’s once a week or once a day, Mary will shower us with grace.

Reflect on the Scriptures

Read Mary’s words and hear her story in the scriptures. Reflecting on her life in this way will draw us closer to her.

Read a book on Mary

A good book on Mary might be exactly the way the Lord wants to help us grow. There are plenty of them out there, pick one up! In some of our cases, an increased devotion to Mary might just look like a couple of Hail Mary’s throughout the day whenever we need help.

For me, devotion to Mary started with the Memorare. If you don’t know this prayer, I strongly encourage you to learn it and pray it when you feel you need some heavenly aid. Through this prayer, I have gained a love for praying the daily rosary, a desire to reflect more on Mary and Jesus in Scripture, and a passion for learning more about Mary’s role in my faith life.

Praying to Mary will lead us to Jesus; today is the perfect time to look at our relationship with her and challenge ourselves to deepen it, so as to deepen our relationship with her Son.

Mary, Mother of the Church and hope for all of mankind…Pray for us!

Jason Theobald is the Director of Youth Ministry at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Huntley, IL. He lives in the Chicago suburbs with his wife Sarah and one-month old son, Noah Michael. He graduated from Franciscan University of Steubenville in 2012, and lived in the Pittsburgh, PA area for a couple of years before moving home to his beloved Chicago.”

Single, Happy, and (Still) a Virgin: An Interview with Arleen Spenceley

Arleen Spenceley is a Roman Catholic Christian and author. Ave Maria Press released her book, Chastity is For Lovers: Single, Happy, and (Still) a Virgin, in the Fall of 2014.

She worked as a staff writer for the Tampa Bay Times for nine years and now writes freelance full-time, mostly for the Virginian-Pilot. She has a Bachelor’s degree in journalism and a Master’s degree in counseling, both from the University of South Florida. She lives in Hampton Roads, Virginia.

Here are some of her insights on family, prayer, living faith in the teens, marriage and dating.

What advice would you give to young Teens in the beginning stages of their faith journey?

Don’t forget that Christ is our friend. It is very helpful for me to look at Him in that light. I know how to be a friend; I have been a friend for a long-time to people. Framing it in that way has made prayer a little bit easier for me.

Prayer is challenging, but I think if we can look at Him as a friend, then we can find that desire to spend more time with Him. I mean, for example, if we stop talking to a friend, after a while we aren’t really friends anymore, right?

So with Christ, prayer is a big part of building and maintaining our friendship with Him. I have been thinking lately, what are the ways I can be a better friend to Jesus? Well, where can I find Him? I find Him at Mass, in adoration, at confession, in the Gospel, I find Him in all of these places. Meeting Him there is something we can all be doing to get closer to Christ.

What is the greatest struggle in living the Catholic Faith?

To me, one of the biggest pitfalls in our life of faith is sloth. I didn’t really even know what sloth was until I read Love and Responsibility by Saint John Paul II a couple of summers ago. He writes in the book, according to St. Thomas, “sloth is a sadness arising from the fact that the good is difficult.”

I think that is a young person’s greatest pitfall today. There are a lot of things that we are supposed to do as Catholics that are very difficult, like practicing chastity, not using contraceptives, etc; Deep down inside, many of us know what is good for us and we know what the right thing to do is, but we live in a culture that does not like to do hard things.

We live in a culture that doesn’t understand that hard doesn’t necessarily negate good. Hard is often very good for us. I think we can fall into these patterns of sloth where I know what the right thing to do is but it is so hard.

I relate it to the parable of the sower: he sows the seed among the thorns and the thorns choke the seed until can no longer bear fruit. So I often feel like sloth is like being among those thorns where you know at the start what is good and you have a desire for it but you are surrounded by so many things that are telling you it’s not good that you kind of forget. We often hear things like, “everyone is doing it;” that is a very modern form of sloth which is incredibly detrimental to our faith.

On Marriage and Dating

Marriage along with any other vocation, is designed for self-gift. In our culture, people are motivated to marry for selfish reasons and not to give of themselves, but marriage naturally destroys self-absorption and promotes self-gift. That is never going to work! I think if people believed marriage is what the Catholic Church teaches it is, fewer people would get married (and I think that isn’t necessarily a bad thing).

I think part of the problem is that Catholics don’t ask really big questions when they are dating. I feel like a lot of people think you meet a guy or a girl, there is some level of interest and attraction, you start to get to know one another, and immediately there is a feeling of an obligation to make this relationship work. The problem is, that isn’t the point of dating! The point isn’t to make a relationship work, it’s to discern marriage.

We have to ask questions people in our culture don’t ask. We can’t simply ask, is this person good-looking, do I feel warm and fuzzy when I am with them? Questions like that are superficial and they are not going to help you determine whether or not this is the person I should marry.

We have to ask questions like, does this person’s work ethic align with what it takes to be in a marriage? Would I be okay if I had kid who one day grew up and turned into this person? Ultimately what we do is meant to glorify God and we are not obligated to try and make a relationship work that isn’t supposed to work.

I think at the root of the problems we face in dating or marriage, and at the root of most, if not all, the biggest social problems in our culture, is the fact that people aren’t practicing chastity.

I think if people practiced chastity there wouldn’t be divorce, abortion, infidelity—none of these things would happen if people practiced chastity. The goal of chastity is love. If we were really loving, then these things wouldn’t happen.

On the Importance of Community

If you feel alone, find people who believe what you believe. We become like the people we surround ourselves with, whether we like it or not. We need to surround ourselves with people who understand whatever struggle we have and who are overcoming them everyday. It is very hard to live Christianity in this culture because we are going against the grain and it’s a lot easier to do that when you are not alone.

Secondly, when you’re seeking advice or need to vent, pick people based on their credentials. If you are struggling in a dating relationship, go to the people who have been happily married for twenty years. They know what they are doing! If we are really trying to get better at something, we need to go to people who are better at it than we are.

How did your family influence your faith?

“When my parents got married, my mom was Catholic and my dad was Jewish. When I was a kid, even though he was Jewish, my dad would always come to Mass with my mom, my brother and myself. When I was in fifth grade he decided to become Catholic, because, I mean, you can only go to Church every Sunday for so long before you realize that this is THE truth (Laughs). So he decided that he would go through RCIA at our church. As he was going through RCIA, my parents pulled me out of public school and put me into a private, Protestant school.

Up to that point, I didn’t know what a Protestant was; I just thought everyone was either Catholic or Jewish because that was my family. So I get to this Protestant school and within a couple of weeks, Catholicism came up. It turned out that my teacher was an ex-Catholic who had, let’s say, strong opinions about Catholicism.

I remember she was standing at the front of the room one day talking about how to get to heaven. She said it was a lot easier for Protestants to get to heaven than it is for a Catholic. For a fifth grader who didn’t really know what a Protestant was, I thought there was something really wrong about that statement.

I went home and asked my parents about what my teacher said and because my dad was going through RCIA, they had resources on hand like tapes from Scott Hahn and different books by various people popular in Catholic Apologetics at the time. Because of that, my parents were always available and able to discuss the faith with me. As my dad was going through RCIA and learning more about the Church, I was able to learn more through them.

What was your favorite family prayer?

I think the most important family prayer was going to Mass. I remember this one time when I was a kid, I was really young, and I said something to my mom like: “Summer is a vacation from school. Why isn’t it a vacation from church?” (Laughs) My mom wouldn’t have it! She said “Oh no…” and explained why we need to go to Church every Sunday. That got me into pattern of finding Mass to be a very important, necessary part of my life.

To learn more about Arleen you can visit her website at http://arleenspenceley.com/ follow her on Twitter @ArleenSpenceley or click here to like her on Facebook.

Finding Joy in Simple Things

The poor have it right. My recent mission trip to Nicaragua taught me where America got things wrong.

Over the summer I went on a mission trip to the Mustard Seed Communities Special Needs Orphanage in Nicaragua. Because of the work I did there and the people I encountered, it was a life changing experience that I will hold dear to my heart for the rest of my life.

The people I met in Nicaragua truly amazed me.

They appreciate the simple gifts of life.

In the eyes of others, these people are considered “poor”, but they are SO rich in love. Some may think that they have every reason to be depressed and miserable but they are the happiest and most joyful people I have ever met. They know that their circumstances are due to the brokenness of the world and they still believe in the goodness of God and that God has a special plan for them despite all the suffering.

It’s easy to feel sorry for these kids because they are abandoned, unhealthy and malnourished, but as I learned more about them and really got to know them, I began to admire them. They may not have all the resources that we have in America, but they do have happiness and love, whereas here in America we have everything we could ever want and yet there is a huge lack of faith and love.

In America, we tend to take a lot for granted and get caught up in the distractions and temptations of life, but when you strip away everything except for the basics, God is the one thing that remains.

Nothing else matters.

When you live a simple life, you don’t worry about the small things and you are able to immerse yourself in the beauty of everyday life. Living simply gives you the opportunity to really live everyday to the fullest and open your eyes to see how God is working in even the simplest of moments.

For example, despite all the language and cultural barriers between the kids and I, God’s love was our common language. They didn’t speak or understand English and I didn’t speak or understand Spanish, but we understood each other’s hearts and we were still able to communicate. God’s love has no boundaries.

It doesn’t matter what language you speak, what race you are, or your physical or mental ability, God’s love prevails above all.

These kids are a true testament of that. Because they live in God’s love, they don’t judge anyone; they look at people through their hearts. Their example challenged me to aspire to be the best version of myself, who God created me to be, at all times.

Ultimately, that is why God created us, to be examples of love in everything we do. I think He puts certain opportunities and people in our lives for a reason and when we discover, accept and live out God’s plan for us in our everyday lives, He will grant us so much peace and grace.

The lives of these children are both heart breaking and heart warming. Some are a product of rape, some were abused, and others were abandoned by their families. It really stuck with me that considering all of this, the mothers of the children chose life. They valued life enough to give their child a chance in the world even if it meant eventually giving them up. Because they chose life, these kids have the opportunity to let God’s beautiful plan for their lives become a reality.

It amazed me to think and meditate on how God truly cares for each and every one of His children that He would make sure to protect them and give them life. God really does have a special and unique plan for us all!

The fact that there is heartache and suffering in this world just proves that we are created for something so much more.

Something beautiful awaits us in Heaven. It will all be worth it. There will be no more suffering, just pure joy and bliss with God the Father. There is so much hurt and suffering in this world, but where there is pain, you can always find joy.

These kids are living proof of that. They don’t have parents and they may never have a stable family, but they find joy and happiness in their everyday life. These kids have experienced more hurt and heartache in their short lifetime than many will experience in their entire lives. But through the every day struggles, they praise God in the sufferings and live everyday to the fullest.

They seek love but they also give love to others and spread love to everyone they meet. They have no feelings of resentment and hold no grudges. Naturally you would think they would be hesitant to become close to others, but these kids just want to be held and loved and to know that someone loves them and cares about them. They will immediately run up to you and give you a hug and a kiss. Love is all they are seeking. This is a profound reality for us all.

Isn’t that what each one of us is seeking? To live a life of purpose and love?

We get that true love from God and God alone. He calls us to love others the way He loves us.

This trip showed me that the most important aspect of life is our faith. Nothing will make us happy or give us peace but God. Our spiritual life is the most important aspect of our life. This has helped me to realize that God doesn’t call us to do extraordinary things, but he calls us to touch lives and change hearts, one person at a time. Experiencing every little moment and being an example of His love and constantly spreading that to everyone we meet. In every little moment, we are building the kingdom of Heaven, one child at a time, one smile at a time.

I ask that you please pray for these children, that although they don’t have an earthly father, that they may grow to know our Heavenly Father.

For more information on how to donate or plan your own trip, visit http://www.mustardseed.com.

Lauren Costabile is a Catholic speaker, singer and film creator. As a performer in the Array of Hope Concert Event, she actively spreads the gospel to young people and families through music. Lauren speaks about of how God has worked so powerfully in her life in hopes that it inspires others and draws them closer to God’s love. She creates inclusive films that educates and raises awareness for those with disabilities in our society. She strives to use her gifts and talents to make our world a brighter place.