Today is the annual day of prayer and awareness against human trafficking, a scourge that impacts an estimated 40.3 million victims a year – mostly women and children.
By Susan Brinkmann, OCDSSpeaking just days before the feast of the Most Holy Rosary in 2010, then Pope Benedict XVI advised the faithful to pray the rosary daily and use it to meditate on the mysteries of Christ "in union with Mary, the Virgin at prayer" which "strengthens us all in faith, hope and charity."
For the third time in less than a year, a tabernacle containing the Blessed Sacrament was stolen from a Catholic Church, this time in Boone, North Carolina.
Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDSHistory was made in May 2017 when Women of Grace® founder, Johnnette Benkovic, now Johnnette Williams, delivered a message about the dignity and vocation of women on the world stage at the United Nations - a message delivered while standing in the shadow of the same Pilgrim Virgin Statue that first visited this global entity 65 years ago!
Reflections and meditations written around the May 1st Feast of Saint Joseph the Worker generally tend to focus on the many sterling qualities of the carpenter of Nazareth. His closeness to God, upright character, and masculine strength as husband to Mary and foster father to Jesus often provide the lead-in to the main point of the writing as appropriate to the feast: Joseph’s role as breadwinner. As the sole support of the Holy Family, surely he worked diligently at his craft, passing it on to Jesus, father to son.
St. Faustina Kowalska (1905-1938), a religious sister known as the “Apostle of Divine Mercy,” wrote this story about a priest in her spiritual diary:
By Kathleen BeckmanThe renowned Pope John Paul II biographer George Weigel gave a moving keynote presentation on suffering in the life of St. John Paul II at the 2005 national conference of the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious. The conference theme was Healing and the Mystery of Suffering. I was there to give my testimony of suffering and healing in the family but the greatest witness we heard was Weigel on the life of Karol Wojtyla. In the latter days of his life that played out on the theater of the world, the Polish Pope became an image of the Suffering Servant of whom the prophet Isaiah wrote so eloquently.
In the rush to create a vaccine to protect the public from the coronavirus, pharmaceutical companies are once again resorting to the use of aborted fetal cell lines. Now is the time to do as our Church advises and exercise our duty to demand that the healthcare system provide ethical vaccines.
Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDSTrue to form, the abortion industry is doing everything in its power to capitalize on the coronavirus emergency by using this pandemic to expand access to abortion. Thanks to the vigilance of the pro-life movement, many of their efforts have been successfully thwarted.
