"The Apostleship of encouragement...consists in heartening our brother, bringing him with word and deed to the true and healthy optimism which is patient of toil and failure, because by God's help it trusts in victory at the end. Life as God sees it is always encouraging -- a very field of glorious opportunities, and therefore true Christian encouragement is making the disheartened and weary see the world through the ever-cheerful eyes of its Creator and its Lord."

~ Rev. Edward F. Garesche, SJ, Your Neighbor and You, imprimatur 1912.

I love the thought that God sees my life as a field of glorious opportunities...as wide open as the blue sky above. I think when a soul is 20 years old, it's a lot easier to see it that way. But many of the saints started their greatest work in middle age or beyond. 

How does God see my life, through His optimistic, loving Eyes? 

He hasn't given up on me...I mustn't give up on myself or my potential to fulfill His dream for my life. What is His dream for YOUR life?

"There is nothing greater outside of Heaven than the act of reaching souls, strengthening, encouraging, enlightening and inspiring them so that they too become helpers, or at least draw closer to God in their struggles and difficulties. Whenever the Cross comes into our lives, be assured that it has come for a purpose."

~ A Sister of Notre Dame de Namur, A Book of Simple Words, imprimatur 1941.

We may have heard the story about the young monk who had trouble with saying unkind things about others. The prior told him to take a down pillow, rip it open, and scatter the feathers in the wind thoroughly. When the monk returned to the prior to tell him it was done, the prior said, "Now go collect every feather and bring it back to me." The young man's jaw fell. "But, but, Reverend Father, how could I possibly find every feather - they've scattered to the four winds!" 

The prior replied that this was exactly the way our uncharitable words scatter abroad. We repeat a bit of gossip or a slight against someone or a judgement on their character, and it is repeated, and carried on and on, until we could never gather back all those negative feathers.

But I'd like to offer the thought today that our positive efforts -- our encouragement of others, our strengthening words, our joy, our kindnesses -- also scatter to the four winds. We will never know how much good we may have done in this life, until Judgement Day, when all will be made clear! Scatter some kindness today!

(The Immaculate Heart of Mary depicted in stained-glass, St. Thomas Becket Church, Veneta, OR.)

Happy 100th Anniversary of Our Lady's first apparition at Fatima! It's hard to believe it's been 100 years...I can still remember hearing this story as a child, and it seeming to be so recent. My grandfather was born in 1917 - he would have been 100 this year. 

How touching and beautiful that Our Lady came and shared her heart with the three children (and with all of us), knowing that we would need the kindness, sympathy, and love of our mother's pure Heart to get us through the rough times ahead. She didn't come as an angry parent during World War I, wanting to punish us or threatening us with World War II and other evils, but as a sweetly, beautifully, sad mother, offering us a refuge in our trials and an answer to our problems. 

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!
"The appeal of Mary at Fatima is once more an appeal for love, for love alone can save us and save the world. To have recourse to this devotion without a spirit of personal love for God's Mother and merely from the 'utilitarian' motive of warding off world disaster would be to miss the real spirit of the Blessed Virgin's appeal for the love of her own children...If we examine our own hearts and souls we shall be able to answer for ourselves the question as to how necessary it is for each of us to make personal reparation...for our own infidelities and sins and continued abuse of grace. Now -- today -- is the time for us to begin this devotion which will surely transform our lives, will obtain for us through Mary from Her Divine Son graces so powerful and so lovingly compelling that it will make of our lives a feeble foretaste of the very joys of Heaven."

~ Rt. Rev. William C. McGrath, P.A., Fatima: Hope of the World, imprimatur 1945.

“It is far better to do a few things well than to start many good works and leave them half-done.”

– St. Francis de Sales

Yesterday, I heard a beautiful conference on how training a child is like building a cathedral. This picture of Notre Dame de La Garde in Marseilles, France, makes me think of that conference. A child's soul (whether it's our student, grandchild, godchild, nephew, niece, or son or daughter) is like this beautiful church - a sacred place, a special place, that takes/took years and years to complete. A lifetime, in fact. Many cathedrals took decades to build. But imagine how sad it would have been if there had been hundreds of them all over Europe that weren't completed because people started good works and left them half-done. Instead, let us "do a few things well"...as well as we can, as long as we can, and trust that God will take it from there.

(St. Thomas Becket Church, Veneta, Oregon)

Today is one of the two feasts of St. Michael the Archangel. We should be comforted and encouraged by the presence of the heavenly messengers around us, ready to help us, ready to defend us, ready to support and encourage us, if we but call upon them.

“If we could only see the joy of our guardian angel when he sees us fighting our temptations.” 

– Cure d’Ars

Please pray for the repose of the soul of James M. Giff, Jr.

(The view when kneeling before the altar in Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, Rome)

“Prayer is the place of refuge for every worry, a foundation for cheerfulness, a source of constant happiness, a protection against sadness.” – St. John Chrysostom

(The image of the Blessed Virgin Mary atop St. Mary Major's in Rome, where St. Pius V is buried.)

This month marks the 100th anniversary of the Blessed Mother's appearance at Fatima, when she asked us repeatedly to say the rosary. Today is also First Saturday, which is also dedicated to devotion to her Immaculate Heart and the Rosary. I offer a quote from St. Pope Pius V on the rosary:

"For she by her seed has crushed the head of the twisted serpent, and has alone destroyed all heresies, and by the blessed fruit of her womb has saved a world condemned by the fall of our first parent....And so Dominic looked to that simple way of praying and beseeching God, accessible to all and wholly pious, which is called the Rosary, or Psalter of the Blessed Virgin Mary, in which the same most Blessed Virgin is venerated by the angelic greeting repeated one hundred and fifty times, that is, according to the number of the Davidic Psalter, and by the Lord's Prayer with each decade. Interposed with these prayers are certain meditations showing forth the entire life of Our Lord Jesus Christ, thus completing the method of prayer devised by the Fathers of the Holy Roman Church....Christ's faithful, inflamed by these prayers, began immediately to be changed into new men. The darkness of heresy began to be dispelled, and the light of the Catholic Faith to be revealed...Following the example of our predecessors, seeing that the Church militant, which God has placed in our hands, in these our times is tossed this way and that by so many heresies, and is grievously troubled troubled and afflicted by so many wars, and by the depraved morals of men, we also raise our eyes, weeping but full of hope, unto that same mountain, whence every aid comes forth, and we encourage and admonish each member of Christ's faithful to do likewise in the Lord."

~ St. Pope Pius V, in his papal bull Consueverunt.

(The statue of St. Pius V in St. Mary Major's Basilica in Rome, where he is buried)

Today is the feast of St. Pope Pius V, the pope of the victory of Lepanto.

When he was dying, "he lay motionless, except for constant kissing of the crucifix. Those nearest him made out the words, alternated with the prayers he was murmuring, 'Lord, increase my pain, but may it please Thee also to increase my patience!' With this heroic act of love, in utmost peace, and features as never before radiant, Pius V died. St. Teresa of Avila, who like St. Pius had the gift of prophecy, seems to have been supernaturally aware in that moment of the Pope's passing and told her nuns to mourn as the Church had just lost her most holy Pastor."

~ Robin Anderson, St. Pius V: A Brief Account of His Life, Times, Virtues and Miracles.