A dear friend of mine , a professed Secular Franciscan like myself, Allen blessed me with a book of prayers put together by his late brother. Truly a marvelous gift idea to comfort us in our sorrow. I believe our faith was meant to be shared. My dad, God rest his soul, had a saying; that always made me laugh and smile, I can hear him say it right now. " Don't hide it divide it". So here you have it all the tools are right here at your fingertips to pray away the evil and welcome in the goodness of Christ. My husband and I have opened up this binder on several occasions when prayers were desperately needed, and I have to say each time we did pray a novena together we sensed the presence of the Holy Spirit in us, in our home, in our prayer requests, which were mainly for other people, friends and family, who needed to be united in powerful way within the holy presence of God. Every single one of those prayers said from the depths of our hearts and with genuine concern for others, were beautiful. Sometimes answers did not come right away, but later proved to be fruitful when they arrived. We fully trust our Mother Mary to assist and cover our children and their spouses, our parents, and living relatives, all under her mantle. We know that life's burdens can be difficult to carry. But we place all our trust in God. Because we give Him all of us, mind, heart, body, soul, spirit, to do with us as He wills, when He wills, and How He wills as our Pastor reminds us. We walk knowing that we never walk alone, we walk always with Jesus, always in his mother Mary, and we walk in and with all of the Saint's. This belief strengthens us interiorly so that exteriorly we can go on to do great things for others in the name of Jesus, in the name of Mary. So today I pass along to you this novena, to listen to and learn everything from so that our Lord can enter into your very heart and soul. We are children of God with a great mission given to us by Christ. It is up to us to find out everything He is challenging us to do, and to become the greatest Christian of all in his eyes. We build upon the knowledge we were given. We give life to the life our mother and father gave us. We share what was shared with us. And we bless everyone that God has specifically chosen to be in our presence, right now, today. Because today wont last, it will one day cease altogether, and we must cease the moment, and do so for Christ. I believe he wants to tap into the deepest spiritual gifts yet to be revealed, and we do this as we discover Him as He is. After all He is our father, and we need the discipline of a great father, and who better to trust with our life and our soul than God. It is when we enter into the abyss of truth with Christ, we see more clearly everything. But we have to go very deep beyond scratching the surface to see Him face to face, to understand what he is about, it is then we understand our self. Our imperfectness rises to the surface of the abyss desiring only to reach perfection in Christ, so we must break free through the waters of truth, and experience the freedom God so anxiously wants to share, and when we get out of his way, we see, we understand, we love, perhaps truly love, for the first time, because we understand that Gods love and our love are one. God does not give us more than we can handle. So be patient in that love, allow it to work through itself, call on Mary to undo the knots in your life. Call on her son and he will help you and save you. ( from yourself). For Christ, is love. And if we are in Christ, we are his love, and that love will see us through from difficulty to full understanding of self, arising out of darkness into his wonderful light.
