Celebrating Saint Padre Pio

Padre Pio is one of my favorite saints and today is his feast day.

I recently read his biography and it was fascinating, things you could not even make up: many miraculous healings, predicting the future and even examples of bilocating. He suffered greatly physically and psychologically. He had the stigmata for most of his life, and endured terrible persecution from many, including from his own order and other archbishops and priests in the Church.

But what is most amazing to me about Saint Padre Pio after reading his biography is how much his life is like Christ's. It finally hit home after I read about his life and felt such a strong love for him that this is what the saints do for us. Through their unique way of living in the world and relating to God, they bring us closer to Christ.

I'll admit, sometimes it is hard for me to relate to Jesus. He lived so long ago and we don't have letters that he wrote or nearly as many anecdotal stories as we have for saints like Padre Pio who lived in more modern times. So, for me, in reading the life of Saint Padre Pio, how much he suffered and his ministry with people, allowed me to grow closer to the person of Jesus because that is who Padre Pio was imitating.

So, thank you Padre Pio for the beautiful gift you are to the Church and the beautiful example you are to all of us as someone who lived virtues heroically and suffered joyfully for love of Jesus.

Mary Mo

I always seem to do this whenever a sibling travels far away, I start to eulogize them in my mind as if it makes any difference to me whether they are in Michigan or Honduras or Costa Rica or Oklahoma.

Mary is gone for her year abroad in Costa Rica and Chile. My mom and I recently discovered that Mary is the only one in her junior class to travel abroad. She mentioned it nonchalantly when my Mom commented on how difficult it has been for her to be able to travel abroad.

This quiet determination on my sister's part set me to reminisce about Mary and the role she has played in her family.

The Noble children are a determined, passionate and stubborn bunch. I would say that these characteristics are present in all of us but are expressed in very different ways.

Mary, although a very extroverted girl since she was little, probably expresses these traits in the quietest way of the family.

I remember one time she asked my mom to go somewhere with her and David. Mom said, "No" and Mary quietly accepted her answer when most of the Noble children would have yelled and possibly thrown something. A half an hour into Mom and David's drive they heard a rustling in the back seat. Mom looked in the rear-view mirror and Mary's little blond head popped up with a huge grin on her face. Mom could hardly muster up a look of disapproval. That is usually how Mary gets things done - quietly, with charm and mischievousness that very few people can resist.

When Mary was around 5 she, like most 5-year-olds at that time was obsessed with Beanie Babies. When McDonalds was selling them in their Happy Meals Mary would sit with a phone book in her lap and call every McDonalds until she found the one that had the Beanie Baby that she had not yet collected. Unabashedly, she would ask them to save it for her and then she would convince my Mom to drive to a McDonalds out in the boonies so she could get her Beanie Baby.

One afternoon I was sitting on the couch reading a book and Mary was sitting on the floor, the Classifieds spread out before her calling EVERY SINGLE person who had an ad for Beanie Babies.

"Hello, I was wondering what Beanie Babies you are selling. Oh, do you have the Garcia Bear? Oh no, ok thanks"

After a while I noticed that Mary would change her voice sometimes as she called people.

(in a gruff male voice) "Hello, could you tell me if you are selling Princess?"

Finally I became suspicious and asked, "Mary why are you changing your voice?"

"Oh sometimes I forget to ask someone a question so I call them back and change my voice so they do not know," she replied.

Ah Mary. I'll miss you down there in Costa Rica. Behave yourself, go to church, hang out with your host family instead of Americans and learn lots of Spanish.

I love you lil' sis.

Sacred Stillness

http://www.sacredstillnesstoday.blogspot.com/

End of the Lectures on the Eucharist

Last night was the last lecture in a series of lectures on the Eucharist at my parish. Even though I loved the Eucharist before it began, I have learned so much and come to a fuller realization of its importance in my Catholic faith.



The Eucharist truly is the powerhouse of my faith and my spiritual life. It was Jesus' sweetness and presence in the Eucharist that drew me back to the Catholic church and to who I am meant to be in this life.



A good percentage of Catholics, less than 60% in most cases I saw in polls on the internet, believe that Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist.



This is not surprising. Jesus' teachings on the Eucharist are hard to swallow.



In John Chapter 6 in the Bread of Life Discourse Jesus says:



"I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world."



The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, "How can this man give us (his) flesh to eat?"



Jesus said to them, "Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.

Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day.

For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink."

After saying this, everyone left Jesus except his disciples because this teaching was so outrageous to them.



It is outrageous. To believe in the Eucharist is outrageous. But the Truth is sometimes outrageous. The lengths that God goes to humble Himself to bring Himself to us is beautiful and outrageous.



May we continue to grow in our faith and our ability to see just how much God loves us, that He is willing to give us the gift of the Eucharist even though most of us, even most Catholics, will not believe.