High on Your Cross,
All the world lay at Your feet,
Broken!
The Body of the Christ is broken,
Broken for us.
The Body of the Lord is broken,
Broken to redeem.
The Father has placed under Your Feet,
Your enemies,
His enemies.
You, broken on the Cross,
Embrace Your enemies,
Willing to Love them into Life.
Inviting my free will to choose Him Whose Heart
Breaks for me.
The Earth quaked at Your Dying,
To open and receive Your Blood.
Grace, all Grace!
High on Your Cross,
With me at Your Feet,
My heart breaks to receive You.
Broken Body of Jesus,
One with me in redemption,
Mine.
© 2016 Joann Nelander
You are God
Wholly Other,
Yet Your humanity
Embraces me
By sacrament.
You are the Head,
The Church, Your Mystical Body,
And in it
I wash my robes,
To take on
The Infant Life of Christ,
Wholly dependent,
Yet gifted
With abundant blessing.
You are God,
Wholly Other,
My Father receives me,
Clothed in the living Flesh
Of the beloved Son.
Copyright 2012 Joann Nelander
All rights reserved
All men are candles,
Burning on some altar.
Some disappear into nothingness,
Before worldly idols,
Unable to sustain their spark
Beyond the veil,
Into eternity.
Others light the heavens
As they are consumed
On the altar of Love,
Merging imperceptibly,
Creature with Creator.
When my wax is spent,
I pray I am not distracted
By my sin.
When I melt
Into the arms of God,
May it be that Love,
That lit my flame,
Outshines my imperfections
In holy consummation.
Burn candle, all alight
Warming with mercy rays the night,
To Penetrate hearts of friend and foe,
To soothe and mend wounds,
Dispelling darkness
With the Uncreated Light
That set creation into being.
Now and forever,
I cast myself
Into the flame,
The furnace of His Sacred Heart.
Passing through pierced side,
One with the Virgin,
Holy angels and expurgated saints of ole,
Melted in union,
I am formed anew in Christ,
With the Father and Spirit,
Candle, altar and Salvation might.
A powerful exorcism prayer
On the thirteenth of January, 1864, the Venerable Father Louis Cestac, founder of the Congregation of the Servants of Mary, was given a vision of the demons of hell spread all over the earth doing indescribable damage, running riot everywhere. At the same time, the Blessed Virgin appeared to him and gave him this prayer, saying that the time had come to spread it all over the world, and that God wished it to be done. What interests me about the history of this prayer is that it predates the St. Michael prayer written as a result of a vision of Pope Leo XIII by approximately 40 years later, and that it clearly derives from Gen. 3:15.
When we are doing our best to live the Faith and to witness to Christ, we will be attacked. Hard. The work of the demons is unceasing and we experience it physically, mentally, and spiritually. Sometimes it seems like many things are conspiring to disturb our peace of mind and wear us out. This is their invisible work bearing visible consequences.
Our loving Mama Mary, the one given us by Jesus at the foot of the Cross, the one who shared His passion most deeply, the one He desires us to love and venerate, wishes not one soul to be overcome by hell. We invoke our powerful and loving mother under the title of “August Queen of Heaven and Sovereign Mistress of Angels” to use the power given her by God to dispel demons.
Pope St. Pius X approved this prayer for indulgences. The power of the keys. (Barbara A. Schoeneberger)
August Queen of Heaven
August Queen of Heaven, Sovereign Mistress of Angels, you who at the beginning received from God
the power and the mission to crush the head of Satan,
we beseech you humbly, send your holy legions so that,
on your orders and by your power, they will track down demons,
fight them everywhere, curb their audacity and plunge them into the abyss.
Who is like God?
Oh good and tender Mother,
you will always be our love and our hope.
Oh divine Mother, send the Holy Angels and Archangels to defend me
and to keep the cruel enemy far from me.
Holy Angels and Archangels defend us, protect us. Amen.
Alfred Lord Tennyson/Wikipedia
This poem by Alfred, Lord Tennyson seems very appropriate for the New Year -the Advent New Year beginning today.
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more,
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.Ring out the want, the care the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
Be Holy! 