The Unprofitable Servant: Home Sweet Home

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Home Sweet Home

Well dear friends, I'm back. I returned yesterday after a harrowing experience at the Newark Airport and subsequent bus ride home. I was never so happy to see my husband and Rebecca as they waited for the bus to pull up. It was an exhausting trip and I am still feeling as though I'm in a fog. Jet lag following a week of sleeping in 6 different beds in 10 days will do that to a person.

Eventually, I will get around to posting some photos and telling you all about the experience. I will frame the discussion by telling you off the bat that it would seem that most of the people who took this journey with me were not so much interested in the spiritual benefit as they were in taking a trip to Italy and shopping. I'm very glad to have gone, but I doubt I will return. It was very hard to have any prayer time or solitude. There was but a handful of fellow "pilgrims" who understood proper reverence of the Blessed Sacrament and appropriate behavior in sacred places. Believe when I tell you that I took advantage of every opportunity to pray before the Blessed Sacrament and I offered all of your intentions in some very sacred spaces, some well-known and others off the beaten path.

The trip was complicated by the presence of an individual who is very troubled. He should have had a caretaker with him as his behavior was often very inappropriate and intrusive and on top of it, he had a tendency to wander and get lost. For some reason, he had an affinity for me and I noticed that the people who claimed to have the most sympathy for him were those that spent the least amount of time with him. Suffice it to say that I could have gone to confession every single day and still would not have felt it was enough. I did my best given my own short-comings and the limitations of being human. How he managed to finance and arrange such a trip is still a mystery to me. Please keep him in your prayers and please beg God's forgiveness of the moments I had with him when I felt less than Christian.

There were times when I simply felt I had died and gone to Heaven. The culmination of the trip for me was the visit to the Grotto of Saint Michael, which was the reason I went on this journey to begin with. I made a bee-line for the cave where the great Archangel appeared centuries ago and the words of the Nunc Dimitis came to mind, I felt so at peace.

Now, Lord, you can let your servant go in peace.

When some of the fog has cleared from my brain, I will chronicle some of the places we saw. Because the priest who met us in Rome is someone very high in the Augustinian order, most of the sites we visited were of Augustinian saints. He is a very fine priest and although not inclined to celebrate the TLM, he often offered Mass ad orientem and was very faithful to the liturgy with no improvisations.

5 comments:

Kathy Felsted UsherOctober 5, 2011 at 6:25 PM
Welcome back!
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CarolineOctober 5, 2011 at 8:30 PM
So glad you're back Joyce...Thank you for your prayers in all the Holy places..I thought of you often and have missed your presence here at Little Way. Enjoy your family time...and rest.
+ Caroline
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KellyOctober 5, 2011 at 9:19 PM
So glad you made it home in one piece! I'll bet your family is so glad to have you back, as are we! Can't wait to hear about it--hope you can rest up a bit before going back to work!
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PatriciaOctober 6, 2011 at 4:29 PM
Welcome home,Joyce! You were in my thoughts and prayers, especially as I made your novena to St. Therese.

I hope when the fog and jet lag clear, that you will remember only the heavenly moments of your pilgrimage.

And...don't give up! I pray you will return one day, perhaps with your family. If you do, you might want to plan it all yourself; it's not hard to do, and then you can spend all your time just as you like...instead of having to go where the group goes.

Thank you for being so kind as to brings all of our intentions. Glad you had a wonderful homecoming! Get some rest! : )

Blessings,
Patricia
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TLWOctober 6, 2011 at 4:38 PM
Thank you everyone for the warm welcome home. I am not feeling well and am scheduled to return to work tomorrow. I've already informed my boss I will only be in briefly and not to expect a full day from me. I'd rather not go in at all but it's someone's last day and I have to be at her farewell luncheon.

At this point, I don't have any desire to return to Italy, although that may change. There is a trip next November to Lourdes and Fatima and my mother really wants to go. I told her to give me a few months to think it over. I can't imagine, the way that I feel now, setting foot outside the US again for a very long while. But time and distance may help. I hope I don't seem unappreciative. I still feel blessed to have gone but it was more exhausting than spiritually enriching and I feel I would have been better off to go on a silent retreat. I didn't leave my family for a week to go on a shopping and eating spree with prayer thrown in sparsely but sometimes, that's what the trip felt like. Live and learn I guess.
God Bless all
Joyce
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Mary, Queen of Peace

Ever glorious and blessed Mary, Queen of Virgins, Mother of Mercy, hope and comfort of dejected and desolate souls, through that sword of sorrow which pierced thy tender heart whilst thine only Son, Christ Jesus, our Lord, suffered death and ignominy on the cross; through that filial tenderness and pure love He had for thee, grieving in thy grief, whilst from His cross He recommended thee to the care and protection of His beloved disciple, St. John, take pity, I beseech thee, on my poverty and necessities; have compassion on my anxieties and cares; assist and comfort me in all my infirmities and miseries, of every kind whatsoever. Thou art the Mother of Mercies, the sweet comforter and only refuge of the needy and the orphan, of the desolate and afflicted. Cast, therefore, an eye of pity on a miserable, forlorn child of Eve, and hear my prayer; for since, in just punishment of my sins, I find myself encompassed by a multitude of evils, and oppressed with much anguish of spirit, wither can I fly for more secure shelter, O amiable Mother of my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, than under the wings of thy maternal protection? Attend, therefore, I beseech thee, with an ear of pity and compassion, to my humble and earnest request. I ask it, through the bowels of mercy of thy dear Son; Through that love and condescension wherewith He embraced our nature, when, in compliance with the divine Will, thou gavest thy consent, and whom, after the expiration of nine months thou didst bring forth from the chaste enclosure of thy womb, to visit the world, and bless it with His presence. I ask it, through that anguish of mind wherewith thy beloved Son, our dear Saviour, was overwhelmed on the Mount of Olives, when He besought His eternal Father to remove from Him, if possible, the bitter chalice of His future passion. I ask it, through the threefold repetition of His prayers in the garden, whence afterwards, with dolorous steps and mournful tears, thou didst accompany Him to the doleful theatre of His death and sufferings. I ask it, through the welts and bruises of His virginal flesh, occasioned by the cords and whips wherewith He was bound and scourged, when stripped of His seamless garment, for which His executioners afterwards cast lots. I ask it, through the scoffs and ignominies by which He was insulted; the false accusations and unjust sentence by which He was condemned to death, and which He bore with heavenly patience. I ask it, through His bitter tears and bloody sweat; His silence and resignation; His sadness and grief of heart. I ask it, through the blood which trickled from His royal and Sacred Head, when struck with the sceptre of a reed and pierced with His crown of thorns. I ask it, through the excruciating torments He suffered, when His hands and feet were fastened with gross nails to the tree of the cross. I ask it, through His vehement thirst, and bitter potion of vinegar and gall. I ask it, through His dereliction on the cross when He exclaimed, "My God! my God! why hast Thou forsaken me?" I ask it, through His mercy extended to the good thief, and through His recommending His precious soul and spirit into the hands of His eternal Father before He expired, saying, "It is consummated." I ask it, through the blood mixed with water, which issued from His Sacred Side when pierced with a lance, and whence a flood of grace and mercy has flowed to us. I ask it, through His immaculate life, bitter passion and ignominious death on the cross, at which nature itself was thrown into convulsions, by the bursting of rocks, rending of the veil of the Temple, the earthquake, and the darkness of the sun and moon. I ask it, through His descent into hell, where He confronted the Saints of the old law with His presence, and led the captivity captive. I ask it, through His glorious victory over death, when He arose again to life on the third day, and through the joy which His appearance for forty days after gave thee, His blessed Mother, His Apostles, and the rest of His Disciples; when in thine and their presence He miraculously ascended into heaven. I ask it, through the grace of the Holy Spirit, infused into the hearts of His Disciples, when He descended upon them in the form of fiery tongues, and by which they were inspired with zeal in the conversion of the world, when they went to preach the gospel. I ask it, through the awful appearance of thy Son, at the last dreadful day, when He shall come to judge the living and the dead, and the world, by fire. I ask it, through the compassion He bore thee in His life, and the unspeakable joy thou didst feel at thine assumption into heaven, where thou art eternally absorbed in the sweet contemplation of His divine perfections. O glorious and ever blessed Virgin! comfort the heart of thy supplicant, by obtaining for me, (Mention your prayer intention here...) And as I am persuaded my Divine Saviour doth honour thee as His beloved Mother, to whom He refuses nothing, because thou asketh nothing contrary to His honour, so let me speedily experience the efficacy of thy powerful intercession, according to the tenderness of thy maternal affection, and His filial loving heart, who mercifully granteth the requests and complieth with the desires of those that love and fear Him. Wherefore, O most blessed Virgin, beside the object of my present petition, and whatever else I may stand in need of, obtain for me also of thy dear Son, our Lord and our God, a lively faith, firm hope, perfect charity, true contrition of heart, unfeigned tears of compunction, sincere confession, condign satisfaction, abstinence from sin, love of God and my neighbour, contempt of the world, patience to suffer affronts and ignominies, nay, even, if necessary, an opprobrious death itself, for love of thy Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ. Obtain likewise for me, O sacred Mother of God, perseverance in good works, performance of good resolutions, mortification of self-will, a pious conversation through life, and, at my last moments, strong and sincere repentance, accompanied by such a lively and attentive presence of mind, as may enable me to receive the last Sacrament of the Church worthily, and die in thy friendship and favour. Lastly, obtain through thy Son, I beseech thee, for the souls of my parents, brethren, relatives and benefactors, both living and dead, life everlasting, from the only Giver of every good and perfect gift, the Lord God Almighty, to Whom be all power now and forever. Amen.

Prayer of St. Bonaventure

Pierce, O most sweet Lord Jesus, my inmost soul with the most joyous and healthful wound of Thy love, and with true, calm and most holy apostolic charity, that my soul may ever languish and melt with entire love and longing for Thee, may yearn for Thee and for thy courts, may long to be dissolved and to be with Thee.
Grant that my soul may hunger after Thee, the Bread of Angels, the refreshment of holy souls, our daily and super substantial bread, having all sweetness and savor and every delightful taste.
May my heart ever hunger after and feed upon Thee, Whom the angels desire to look upon, and may my inmost soul be filled with the sweetness of Thy savor; may it ever thirst for Thee, the fountain of life, the fountain of wisdom and knowledge, the fountain of eternal light, the torrent of pleasure, the fullness of the house of God;
may it ever compass Thee, seek Thee, find Thee, run to Thee, come up to Thee, meditate on Thee, speak of Thee, and do all for the praise and glory of Thy name, with humility and discretion, with love and delight, with ease and affection, with perseverance to the end; and be Thou alone ever my hope, my entire confidence, my riches, my delight, my pleasure, my joy, my rest and tranquility, my peace, my sweetness, my food, my refreshment, my refuge, my help, my wisdom, my portion, my possession, my treasure; in Whom may my mind and my heart be ever fixed and firm and rooted immovably. Amen.

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God Bless You!

The Unprofitable Servant

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Home Sweet Home

5 comments:

Mary, Queen of Peace

St Michael the Archangel

St. Mary Magdalene de Pazzi

St. Teresa Benedicta of The Cross