Showing results by author "Bob and Penny Lord" in All Categories

This book examines the life of Saint Bernadette of Lourdes. We start at the birthplace of Bernadette, the Boly Mill in Lourdes and visit the Cachot where she lived during the apparitions, and La Maison Paternelle where she lived after the apparitions. We enter the Grotto of Massabiele, where our Lady appeared to her and go to Nevers to see her beautiful, incorrupt body.

As her illness had taken a toll on her strength, Saint Gemma Galgani was not able to return to school. She remained at home and taught her sisters and brothers. At her beatification, one of her brothers said, "Gemma always brought the olive branch." She lovingly cared for the needs, both spiritual and physical, of her family, often at the neglect of herself. She had no use for fancy clothes, and adorned herself in simple, extremely austere black dresses.

This story is about another who suffered, only as a Dry Martyr for her Lord, a willing victim of sacrifice for her Church. Just as Blessed Anna Maria Taigi was being born in Italy, another child was coming into the world, Napoleon Bonaparte. When Anna Maria opened her eyes and let out her first cry, it was to a world groaning in pain, a world inundated by sin and perversion, very like our own. The throne of France was heading madly toward its own destruction and demise, taking Christianity down with it.

The miracle that occurred in AD 700 was just the beginning. That was 1250 years ago. Had that miracle taken place and then the flesh and blood disintegrated, as would have been normal, the miracle would have been nonetheless a miracle. The priest's faith had been renewed. The entire town - the whole country, for that matter - became aware of the miracle.

Saint Anthony of Padua was proclaimed a doctor of the church. There are 33 doctors of the church. In the 2,000 years since the church was instituted, out of its millions of holy people, and thousands of canonized Saints, only 33 have been given the honor of this title. We have written about 15 of them thus far. Saint Anthony of Padua, the saint we pray to for lost objects, is one of these honored people. But until the Lord decided to put St. Anthony into active ministry, he was a dish washer and confessor to Franciscan hermits.

One of the most fascinating gifts the Lord has given us is His own burial cloth. How His image was projected onto that cloth, and how it has survived these 2,000 years is nothing short of miraculous. We have always had a great love for and devotion to this gift of Our Lord. Let us share with you the history and the journey of the Shroud.

The account of the "Apparitions of Our Lady at Tepayec Hill in Mexico City - 1531".

St. Paul of the Cross was born Paul Francis Danei, on the January 3, 1694, the second of 16 children. One of his brothers John Baptist would be very instrumental in the work Our Lord had chosen for St. Paul. His parents, although of nobility, were neither affluent nor privileged. Even though the town hall at Castellazzo had once been the family palace, St. Paul's father, a cloth merchant, was always in serious debt.

Saint Margaret of Cortona began her life on earth in the 13th century. Let us go back to that time, to a little farmhouse in Laviano, in the province of Tuscany. There was a flurry in the quiet kitchen. Dusk had no sooner settled into night, when dawn was desperately trying to break through. Water was boiling; the midwife was there to assist the bringing into the world of a new life. It was a girl! The pain of childbirth soon disappeared, as the mother held her new baby in her arms.

Padre Pio was gifted with the cross of Jesus from his earliest days. His personal relationship with Jesus and Mary manifested itself to him from the time he was a child. His entire world centered around the little church of Our Lady of the Angels in his little home town of Pietrelcina. It might as well have been his home. He spent more time there than at his home. All the important events in his early life took place in that church.

Saint Paul was born in Tarsus, a port city in the southeastern part of Turkey. He was from a Jewish family who traced their roots back to the tribe of Benjamin. This Jewish community had been sent to Tarsus during the Diaspora. Pompey had made Tarsus the capital of the province of Cilicia. Mark Anthony gave the people of Tarsus freedom, immunity, and the right to become Roman citizens, which accounts for Paul's reference to, and pride in, his Roman citizenship. He invoked his rights as a Roman citizen many times during his ministry to get out of some serious scrapes with the Jews.

Our Lord Jesus loves us so much, he made detailed preparations for our well-being, right up to the end of his life. He wanted to have a last supper with his disciples. He had instructions for them. He wanted to be sure they understood their role in Salvation History, and how they were to conduct themselves. He wanted to leave them and his Church ammunition for the days ahead.

Being of the laity and never feeling worthy to be a priest, Philip Neri desired nothing but to serve as a lay man. He had been preaching in the hospitals and on the street corners, waiting for the office workers to leave for lunch or home. He would speak to them and instruct them with the true teachings of the Church. He taught with such love and such fire that more and more came and stayed longer and longer, until they began following him, visiting the poor and the infirm. The confraternity of the Laity was formed!

It is said of St. Francis of Assisi that he didn't trust books and never wanted his friars to get distracted and influenced by the words of authors, whose works he also didn't trust. He trusted the Bible, but not certain people's interpretations of it. He was finally willing to bend in his staunch stand against book learning on the advice of St. Anthony of Padua, who was not only brilliant, but whom St. Francis trusted.

We follow Mother Mary on a journey again to a far-off place high up in the mountains, where no one would consider going. We have never really paid much attention to what towns are located where in Japan, other than Tokyo, Nagasaki, and Hiroshima. In looking on a map, we find Akita to be a thriving metropolis in the north of the country, with a population of about 300,000 people - a lot more than you would consider for a small town in the mountains of Japan.

March 25 is the Feast of the Annunciation. On this particular year 1945, it fell on Palm Sunday. This is such an important season in our church. But in those times, during the final days of the war, thoughts were not focused on Palm Sunday, or the Feast of the Annunciation, or even Easter, for that matter. Ida Peerdeman, the woman to whom the virgin Mary chose to come, called it a "hunger winter". Priests would visit private homes, rather than take a chance on Nazi retaliation for trying to perform religious ceremonies, like Mass, especially not in public places, like churches.

We know Our Dear Lady was upset about how her priests and nuns, as well as the laity were being treated. She had always been so loving to her children. It was she whom Jesus allowed to intercede on our behalf. We drove him beyond reconciliation, and yet, because of her, he allowed his arms to be held back. It did not seem that mankind was going to get any better. It was time for tribulation. But the Mother, the loving Mother, asked again for one more chance to reason with her children, and again, the gift was given by the Son to the Mother.

The Lord had an urgency to give Saint Faustina Kowalska the message of divine mercy with or without a spiritual director; and so, the day was to come, on February 22, 1931, in Vilnius, when the Lord’s mission would begin to be revealed to her. She was in her cell; she saw the Lord Jesus clothed in a white garment.

To study the history of the world, especially Europe, is to discover the history of the Church. For, the Church has always played an integral part in the annals of history, as she continues to follow her master Jesus Christ, who told the apostles, “I will be with you till the end of the world.” For, since the children of God are living in the world, then so must the happenings of the world be intertwined with Mother Church as her children are affected by the world they live in.

St. Robert Bellarmine, brilliant follower of St. Ignatius of Loyola, has been credited with being one of the most outspoken critics of the heresies of Martin Luther and John Calvin. He focused the church of his time on the true teachings of the Catholic faith, which were contradicted by the Protestant Reformation. He is one of the powerful men discussed in this book whom the Lord sent to construct a suit of spiritual armor to defend his Church in this crucial time of crisis.